


We come from Warriors

by liliaeth



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Alcohol Withdrawal, Andy needs a hug, Booker | Sebastien le Livre & Nile Freeman Friendship, Booker | Sebastien le Livre Needs a Hug, Depiction of torture, Everyone Needs Hugs, F/F, F/M, Freemans are warriors, Gen, Hurt Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani, Hurt Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, M/M, Medical Experimentation, Minor Character Death, Nile Freeman Needs a Hug, Nile's Mom takes no crap, Post-Movie: The Old Guard (2020), Protective Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Quynh needs a hug, Soft Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Team as Family, but nobody misses them, motherhen Nicky, pre Book of Nile
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-29
Updated: 2020-12-29
Packaged: 2021-03-10 23:53:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 18
Words: 34,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28405815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/liliaeth/pseuds/liliaeth
Summary: Solomon Freeman didn't even expect to get an internship. But when Merrick industries offers him one, and a chance to work with the illustrous Dr Kozak, as a second year med student, he's not going to say no.When Nile finds out her little brother's been lured in by Merrick Industries she needs the entire team to get him home safe. Booker included.To the team's shock, Booker brings an old friend along to help them out.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 12
Kudos: 146
Collections: The Old Guard Mini Bang 2020





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the 'The Old Guard 2020 Big Bang".
> 
> Thanks so much to mistynights for betaing. This fic would be a lot harder to read without their help.
> 
> Art by artgroves

Solomon hesitated as he reached the door. He didn't want to go in. Not now, not when Mom would have prettied up the room, trying to achieve holiday cheer, desperate to pretend things were normal, that there wasn't another empty chair at the table. He was about ready to just turn around, to take his gifts back to the car and leave, go to a bar, and drink soda after soda, until he got on too much of a high and had to head out in his car, driving till the carbohydrate high was out of his system.

And then show up next morning, tell Mom, sorry, I couldn't make it. And face the disappointment in her eyes once and for all. To for once not have her be strong, and firm, and still standing. 

Because that was the worst of it, that she refused to show she was just as hurt as he was; the pretense that everything was fine with her. That Nile... that Nile being gone hadn't broken her, like it had him. 

He was about to lower his arm, to turn around, as the door opened, and Mom was standing there, reading his mind, as she had always done. She didn't say anything, he didn't expect her to, just opened the door and let him in. Smiling as he put his gifts under the Christmas tree. 

Margery and Jonas, the next door neighbors were already sitting at the table, Margery helping her husband with his soup. They were both in their eighties and still married. Their children and grandchildren couldn't make it this year. Not with the virus, and as usual, Mom hadn't wanted them to be on their own. Solomon knew he'd be expected to help them out with Skype later on. He wouldn't say no. 

The two white boys sitting at the corner were new. College students, who'd rented a room across the street, unable to go back home to their parents. Studying wasn't cheap. 

And then there were the Williams kids, Suzie would be late, as always, working hard to keep a roof over her children's heads. Queenie was making sure Jamal and Donnie were helping out Mom, and being good guests. But Sol could see the energy burning behind their eyes. 

He took of his coat and took them off their sister's hands, and out of Mom's way, getting them playing on his and Nile's old X-box, cheering them on until Mom said food was done. 

And all that time he didn't look at the fireplace even once. 

Not at the picture of Dad in his dress blues, with the black ribbon. And definitely not at the picture of Nile. God, Nile. He didn't want to think of how she should be here. How she'd complain about helping Mom with cooking, while Sol got to sit on his ass and do nothing. But would then chide him and order him back to the living room if he even considered trying to take over for her.

They all knew he could make water burn without even trying.

Nile's chair stayed empty at the table, just as Dad's had for years. The plating was set, Nile's favorite glass right above the plate. They didn't use fancy glassware, not even during Christmas, just used whatever Mom had in her closets. 

The room was full of people, full of life. But to Sol, it felt empty, and he hated it. He hated it, he wanted to yell and scream at Mom, and he couldn't bring himself to do it. Mom came up to him, and put her hand on his shoulder. He didn't want to lean into it, but he couldn't help himself. 

When the night was over, he let Mom send him to his old room, and he stared at the ceiling, at the stars Nile had drawn there for him. That's when he cried. At fucking silver stars that didn't look quite right, because a thirteen year old had barely managed to stay up on the ladder right to stick them there for him. But his sister had put them there, so to him, they'd been perfect. 

He didn't think of the gifts under the tree, not of the ones for him, and not of the one with Nile's name on them, that would never be opened. That would go in the cupboard, along with Dad's. Tears fell down his face.

When he got the news of the internship earlier that week, he'd almost automatically called his sister's number. But of course, she didn't respond. He knew her phone had gone missing, stolen, some asshole taking one last bit of Nile away with them, as if they hadn’t lost enough already. Sol didn't even know why he'd paid the bill for it. Mostly just so he could call her phone, and talk into the answering device, and tell his big sister about his day, his week. 

Having it cut off right away, with her voice telling him to leave a message, felt almost... like part of her was still there.

He rang the number. 

"Merry Christmas River girl. I miss you."

It would never be enough.

****  
  
  


Booker sat alone, staring at a picture of his family, already down one bottle. He wanted to knock himself out, to keep from dreaming. He didn’t even deserve to drown tonight, not after what he’d done.

The neighbors were knocking on the walls again, screaming at each other in quick French, shouting at one another over ruining Christmas. 

He more fell down on the couch, than sat on it. The thing was covered in stains; vomit, booze, it didn’t matter. He lay his head down, and was in the water mere seconds later. Screaming again.

“I’m sorry, Quynh.” He whispered at her in his dreams, wishing he had better images to give her than his own misery, as if her own wasn’t bad enough as it were.

She reached out to him, her mind showing him a fish, swimming in front of her, a light in the dark, right before she died.

A few more bubbles and gone.

He woke up with a hangover. He drank a few more shots to get over it.

It was almost insulting how full of Christmas cheer the streets were even now. People huddled in warm winter coats, desperate keeping distance as they did their final Christmas shopping. The streets should be packed, but they weren’t.

It felt almost fitting.

He saw a store selling baklava, he wondered if Andy would recognize it. It had been only four months, ninety-nine years and eight more months to go. The reality of it all was too heavy to consider. He needed something to drink.

He hated Christmas, hated the false cheer that only made it clear just how alone he really was.

By the time he ended up in church, it was almost midnight, the priest and parishioners were long gone. It had been far too easy to pick the locks. 

He sat in the confession booth, screaming at a deaf God, begging him why. Why him? Why couldn’t he die? Why God, why?

He finally woke up when the cleaning woman screamed as she found him in the morning. He just shoved her some money to keep her silence and left.

He hated Christmas. He’d loved it when his children were young, but then, they were long gone, and what use was any of it now? Not like it would last, as if anyone would remember days like these in a century, two, three…

He missed Nicky’s food, he missed Joe’s bawdy poems, he missed sharing a bottle with Andy.

He dreamed of Quynh. She was reaching for the light. 

He’d never dreamt that before.


	2. Chapter 2

Nile stared around at the empty grayness of the safe house. Andy and Joe had helped her drag in a Christmas tree earlier. It looked huge, taking up what felt like half the room. Of course then she found out they didn’t have any Christmas decorations. It was one of those things that pointed out just how old these people were. 

Nicky had helped her out, baking dough to cut out and hang on the tree, as she used some of the old papers that for some reason were still stuck in one of the closets and used it to make garlands and figures, making sure they weren’t important. Nicky said they’d been there before they even bought the safe house a few decades ago.

She’d expected that Andy didn’t care for Christmas, and Joe only cared about Christian holidays when Nicky did. And as it turns out, as far as Nicky was concerned, Christmas was about going to mass. He talked about how in the past, in a lot of European countries, people would celebrate the day raucously, but the notion of Christmas as a family day was relatively new. Well relatively based on their age that is. Even the Christmas tree was something that hadn't come into vogue until the 19th century, so even Booker hadn't grown up with it.  
She knew that they'd celebrate it with her, for her sake, but it felt odd making them do anything elaborate for a holiday that wasn’t theirs.  
Part of her wondered how much of it was about distracting them from missing Booker. Booker, whose presence could be felt all over the safe house; in the books he’d left in every room, in the wine bottles in the basement, in a closet full of men’s clothes, left behind since they had to leave in a hurry last time they’d been in the house. 

Andy was sharpening her axe in the corner; she'd used it earlier to help cut down the tree. Joe was cleaning their guns. And it felt ... weird, sitting here. She had to leave the room, feeling more alone in the midst of her friends, her... family, than she did away from them. She pulled out her old phone. Copley had given her an app, so she could download all her messages, her pictures and whatever she wanted to keep, without anyone noticing she had. 

She was about to listen to one of her Mom's old messages, the one she'd sent when she'd been on active duty last year, unable to get home for Christmas, trying to pretend for just a moment that everything was normal. That she was just on assignment. When she noticed there were over a dozen new messages that she hadn't listened to yet.  
She opened the most recent one, Sol's voice ran through.   
"Merry Christmas, River girl. I miss you."

She almost threw the phone on the floor. Anything to keep her from calling him back right then and there. Instead she listened to every message ever recorded.   
Sol, Sol again, Sol some more. Mom, Mom's voice cracking, begging her to call her, to tell her it was all a lie. That Nile could just answer her. Mom sounded broken, in anger, in grief, in loss. 

"Do you want me to take it?"  
Nile stared up at Andy. And before she even thought it through, she gave the older woman the phone. Andy put it away in her coat pocket, keeping it safe for when Nile was ready for it again. 

"Nicky says dinner's ready."  
Nile nodded.   
"You know, it's odd how holidays come and go. How things change. But I remember when we used to celebrate Saturnalia. Or any of the feasts before that. Midwinter feasts have always been a thing, especially in Northern countries."

Nile looked away. 

"You're not alone, Nile. I know that I'm not your Mom, that the others aren't your brother. But we are a family. And we'd love to celebrate Christmas with you."

“You just want a reason to eat and get drunk.” Nile said, forcing a smile on her face.   
“Damn right, I do.” Nile let Andy put her hand on her shoulder, as she guided the both of them back inside. There were only four chairs at the table, making her realize her chair would have been Booker’s the last time around. She almost wished she had his number, so she could tell him someone was thinking of him. 

Andy was right, celebrating here wasn’t the same as it would have been back at home with Mom. But Nicky made some kind of pasta with shrimp that sounded just like something Mom would have found on the cooking channel. Even if Nicky was a way better cook than Mom had ever been. She thought how she could never tell her Mom that though, and then she remembered she wouldn’t be able to do so anyway.   
Joe sang some Christmas songs he’d learned over the years. It almost made her ears bleed, but they were good raucous fun. Then Andy and Nicky sang some old Italian, sorry Genoese, canton that had been the rage when Nicky had been a kid, and though she didn’t understand the words, it felt like coming home.   
She didn't ask Andy for her phone back, not for at least another two weeks. She knew she'd be too tempted to call up her brother, to check his facebook, and like every post he'd made in the past few months. By the time she could finally trust herself again, over a month had passed, and the first message she found on her brother's page was about an internship he was starting in a month.  
Some medical lab, for some high power company. Sol was going to be a doctor, a scientist. That's part of why she'd become a marine in the first place, to make the money for him to go to school, so Mom wouldn't have to pay for Nile's college cost as well as Sol's. Sol always had been the smart one out of the two of them. 

For him to get an internship like that, it would be a dream come true  
It wasn't until she read the name of the company he'd be working for that her blood ran cold. 

Merrick Pharmaceuticals International.

Oh shit.

**********

Carlton sat in front of the fireplace. The electric light played an expertly designed pattern to give a soothing atmosphere to the room. His children were busy this year. His oldest son was trying to deal with things in London, cleaning up the mess that Steven’s death had left behind.

Carlton shifted in his chair, feeling every ache in his body as he stared at the pictures in the file Hartley had sent him. 

He’d been young once, his entire life ahead of him. Deborah had told him over and over again that there was more to life than money, something she had then belied when she took half of it when she left him thirty years ago. He’d never remarried. 

“What else can I take to get you to even notice I’m gone? Money is all you ever cared about!”

He was better off without a woman in his life constantly trying to get his attention, demanding him to spend time with his children, wasting time he could have spent on things that mattered. Getting them the luxuries they all benefited from their entire life.  
And were they grateful for any of it? Hell no.

His daughter had sided with her. She’d called him earlier that morning, but she was taking her children and grandchildren to spend Christmas with Deborah. Her father had been no more than an afterthought. And Hartley… It’s like he kept expecting Carlton to say something about Steven. But what was there to say? Steven had screwed up. They’d lost millions to whatever Steven had been working on. And all they had left of it was a bunch of pictures of men that might, just might, live forever.It made him feel every ache in his bones, knowing that soon he’d be gone of this earth, and there’d be nothing left of him. Just an old wasted body and a whole lot of money. More than he’d ever thought he’d have.

He opened the file again and stared at the faces of people who, if they were real, would never age. They would never feel the aches in their bones, would never see their hair go grey, would never need glasses to fix their ailing eyes, or a cane to be able to walk. 

“Mister Merrick?”

“Yes?”

“I’m sorry, sir, but you asked to tell me when Dr Kozak got here?”

He took one more look at the pictures.

He was dying, and when he died, all he’d worked for would be going to a bunch of ungrateful nitwits. Might as well use it for his own needs one last time…

He couldn’t wait to see the look on their ungrateful faces when they’d grow old and die, and he’d still be there, forever.

“Let her in.”


	3. Chapter 3

3.

  
  


Solomon smiled as he started his second week at Merrick Inc. Oh, he was mostly doing the kind of busy work, bringing coffee, checking sample after sample after sample for minor differences, even knowing they'd already gone through two computer programs. But on some things they still needed human eyes, no matter how much of a drag it was. 

But Merrick Pharmaceuticals was one of the forerunners in the medical industry, and to have a name like that on his cv would open doors he could never even think of getting close to otherwise.

He remembered when he'd first arrived, and he'd had to go through an entire medical checkup, just to make sure he wasn't accidentally carrying any bacteria into the company. Typical blood work, and for a joke, one of his co-workers had said, they might as well try a DNA test. Why not right? If you were in one of the best labs in the world, who wouldn't want to see their DNA under a microscope if you got the chance.

The odd part though, was Dr Kozak. John, his direct boss, said to pay her no mind. She was always a bit odd. And that really, Dr Kozak was the reason he'd gotten the job. She'd seen a paper of Sol's that he'd done for school last year, and had hand picked him for the job. 

Sol wanted to be grateful, he wanted to prove that he was worth the opportunity she'd given him. And he knew she was just making sure he was worth the investment of time that the company was putting into him, that her recommendation wouldn't be wasted. But the way she stared at him, the scrutiny she put him under, at times it made him feel like a lab rat, a priced object, rather than a person.

He tried to ignore it, tried to just focus on the work, on the people he was working with. And it should be enough. He liked his co-workers, he'd learned more about actual lab work in one week at Merrick's, than he'd had after over two years of pre-med. But he couldn't help the feeling that something felt off. He just wasn't sure what it was.

“Doctor Kozak needs you in her lab, Freeman.”

“What for?” He was already finishing off what he’d been working on. Settling his glasses, after cleaning them up.

“Who knows. You should be happy, she’s one of the higher ups, if she likes your work, you might actually get a decent enough security level to be put on the interesting work, instead of wasting your eyes on the drudge work.”

Solomon snorted at that, before grabbing his badge and following John to Dr Kozak’s office. The man didn’t use his to get them in, even though you needed one to get through almost any door in the building. “This is way above my security clearance”, was all John said, before pressing the bell to ask whoever was inside to let them in, leaving Solomon standing in front of the door.

Doctor Kozak was studying something when he got in, leaving him standing in the door for a few minutes. He tried to study her. She looked to be in her forties, a stern focus in her eyes as all her attention was hooked on whatever she was working on. Her hair was tied up above her head, making her look like the image of a librarian. Sol wondered if he should say something, but what if doing so would interrupt her? She had to already know he was here. After all, she had to have let him in. He was still hesitating when she swiveled her chair towards him. 

“Mister Freeman, thank you for coming.” Her accent stood out under her voice and Sol’s hand moved to the back of his neck, as he stood there awkwardly.

“Can you take a look at this for a second?” He instantly approached and got closer to the computer, wondering what he was supposed to see.

He shivered as he got within her range. She didn’t touch him. Just sat there, staring at him. 

“What is it Doctor?” he finally asked. 

“That, my young friend, is the most amazing find of the century;” He stared at her, curious, but not quite understanding what he was supposed to be seeing. “At first sight, it’s perfectly normal. Nothing extraordinary about it. Just your typical type AB minus blood. Not the most common blood type out there, but other than that… normal.”

He stared at the camera. “This blood sample was taken half a year ago, can you tell me what’s special about that?”

“Was it frozen?”

The woman smiled.

“No, this particular sample wasn’t even placed in a refrigerator.”

Solomon’s mouth almost fell open in shock. He took another look at it. 

“As you know, under normal circumstances, the nitric oxide in the blood would start dropping almost immediately. There’s an expiration date on blood, the second it leaves the body. But with this … sample, there’s no such limit. It dries up, as the liquid evaporates, but the blood cells, when kept properly, remain alive, regenerate almost instantly.”

“How?”

She grabbed a remote and started a video on the screen above them. In it, she was taking a sample of a white man, who cringed at the injection of the needle in his body.

“The donor was the subject in this video. Look closely.”

Sol tried to follow her suggestion, unsure what to look for. But all he could notice was the gasp of pain the man gave out as the needle went further and further into him, the bonds keeping his arms to the table. It had to be to keep him steady as the sample was taken. Sol wondered if he just imagined the man fighting against the bonds. Probably not, that needle had to hurt. It was as the needle left the man’s body that he realized what she wanted him to see. Based on the size of the needle, there should be some blood, some type of injury. It was like being stabbed by a saber. Yet, aside of a drop or two, the place where the needle left the body closed almost immediately.

“Cellular regeneration.”

Like Wolverine. The guy healed at a speed that should be impossible.

“So, where is he? The donor I mean.”

“He… left. Disappeared. We are currently working to find him again.”

“Oh”, Sol took another look at the video.

“There are five of them. Well four now, as the oldest woman lost the ability.” Sol tried not to stare at her. “Five seemingly perfectly normal people. A bit more violent than usual, but then that’s to be expected from soldiers. Yet regardless how… “normal’, how ‘human’ they might appear, they can heal from any injury, survive anything. “

She clicked the remote, showing an old picture that had to date back to the civil war.

“Even time does not touch them. Unable to age, unable to die.”

Sol couldn’t stop a gasp at that.

“Imagine if we could duplicate that ability, if we could find the source for it. We could end aging, cure any disease, find a solution against death itself.”

“That’s amazing.” Sol now stared at the glimpse of the blood on the monitor. “So why did they leave?”

The doctor didn’t respond right away, she just stared at him. Sol shivered under her eyes. 

“Selfishness. Some people simply do not wish to share their … talents.”

Solomon couldn’t help but remember the clip he’d just seen, of the needle going into the man’s body, the way it had to have hurt to go in like that, the clench of the fingers, desperate to hold onto anything. If any of the other testing had been like that, Sol couldn’t really blame the man for not volunteering for more of it.

“But now that you’re here, Mister Freeman, I’m sure we will soon find a way to continue the project.”

Sol didn’t understand.

  
“After all, what sister would not come when her brother needs her?” Sol was about to turn around and ask her what she meant, when he felt something pressed against his neck, a needle going in.

His eyes went dizzy as he stared up at her for a moment before he lost consciousness. 

“Don’t worry, Mister Freeman. Your contribution will help beyond measure. Besides, wouldn’t you want to see your sister again?”


	4. Chapter 4

4.

Andy kept an eye on their youngest member. Nile was trying not to show it, but it was clear all through the flight that she was worried sick. The girl hadn’t even put her seatbelt on when they’d taken off. 

Nicky and Joe were going over their equipment; Nicky was checking his rifles, while Joe was sharpening the swords. It was one of the advantages of using a ‘private’ plane for a trip like this. It wasn’t a drug runner this time, instead they were using one of Copley’s contacts, meaning the plane was a bit sturdier than the ones Andy was used to. But even a military transport like their current plane was better than using commercial flight. Especially for a trip that took over thirteen hours. They’d land at least once before they arrived, and then they’d spend the rest of the trip by car. 

She knew Nicky and Joe were avoiding talking about whom they’d meet in Chicago. Joe had gotten pissed off when she told them, Nicky wasn’t happy about it either, but they both knew that Joe had been the one hurt the worst by the betrayal. He and Booker had been closest for years. Joe had always seen Booker like the younger brother he’d lost in Jeruzalem. Ahmad had only stayed in the city because he hadn’t wanted to leave his brother on his own, when the rest of the family evacuated the city. And for Joe, looking after Booker had been a way to make up for his brother’s death. 

It had been Copley’s suggestion to bring Booker in. He’d been unaware of Booker’s exile, and had thus put his foot in it. Andy should have corrected him, and said no, but instead she’d said she’d think on it. Copley was a smart man, but he was a pragmatist. Working for the CIA had made him see past personal issues to work with people he didn’t like. It’s part of what got him working with Merrick, despite his personal distaste of the man. From his perspective there was no reason not to use an asset like Booker. He still had to learn that some things went beyond pragmatism.

Joe told her no, that they couldn’t trust Booker. Andy understood all too well. That moment where she found out that Booker had betrayed them, that her boys were captured because of him, she’d wanted to tear him to pieces. To kill him, throw him in a cage and let him feel what Quynh felt as he drowned over and over. But then he told her why he’d done what he did. And her heart had broken for him, for what he thought she’d want. 

Even if he hadn’t been entirely wrong. Dying had been her only purpose in life for far too long, ever since she’d lost the other half of her heart.

So yes, she got it. She got the way Nicolò seemed to linger just a touch longer whenever Joe had to leave his presence. The way Yusuf shivered at certain scents, especially anything that was a touch too clinical, too sterile. She saw the way they slept if possibly even closer to one another than ever before. They were still hurting, some part of them might do so forever. Especially as long as anything connected to Steven Merrick still existed. 

God, seeing that name on some of the medication she’d had to use since she’d lost her immortality, she’d wanted to go with anything even vaguely generic, any other brand if at all possible. The problem being, Merrick’s products were some of the best. And she did have to be pragmatic, some of the time.

Including working with Booker, especially since Merrick was involved once again. Booker had investigated Merrick after Copley suggested them. He had more experience with the company than the rest of them had. Besides, Book was their tech expert. Nile knew tech, like only a child of the latest millennium could. But she was still learning, she hadn’t been studying computers since their infancy like Booker had. 

She knew how to study patterns, but she was still locked in techniques that the marines had taught her, and hadn’t learned all the backdoors and hidden streams of the dark web, or whatever it was called these days.

Andy didn’t have a clue about the internet, she knew the basics of how to use it, but it was as alien to her, as the surface of the moon had been to humanity for most of her life. Booker though, he’d grown alongside technology, it was his second language, and there were things he could teach Nile that no one else could.

Joe could have called her out, told her that Copley knew more on both than Booker did. Booker was good, Copley was better. It’s just… he didn’t. Nicky had given them a look, and then gone after Joe, put his hand on his husband’s shoulder before pulling him in for a hug, whispering in his ear. 

Andy’s heart lightened at seeing them together. Hoping they’d find comfort in one another, in Nile, even in Booker, after she was gone. She knew they needed time, she knew they couldn’t just forgive Booker, that there needed to be a price. But her family would need one another, all too soon she’d be gone, and if they couldn’t rely on each other then, than what did they even have left?

“I don’t know if I can trust him either, not this soon.” Nicky had whispered, using that old language, the first one the both of them had shared. Sounding almost soft, the words feeling almost hauntingly familiar. Reminding her of Quynh after they’d first met Lykon. He’d been a stranger to them. This young soldier who died under Alexander’s command. They’d dreamt of him for years, before Andy had finally managed to convince Quynh to go look for him. To think of all the days they lost with him. Time that they could have found him sooner, spent with him, if they hadn’t thought they had all of eternity before them. Time that she herself no longer had.

Nile eyes were locked on her phone, checking something. Andy sat down next to her, she noticed Nile’s screen was on facebook.

“Solomon hasn’t been online in days.” Nile said. 

Andy didn’t get it. So what?

“I used to get annoyed at all the pings I’d get from whatever post he’d make. This one time, he.. he kept posting on twitter, one letter per post, by the end he made 39 posts just to say ‘Oblandi oblada are you annoyed yet, Rivergirl’.” Nile turned to look at her. “I haven’t known him to be offline for longer than five hours, even when he’s sleeping.”

“How many days?”

“The last thing he responded to was uncle George’s post about his pancreas. Three days ago.”

Which meant their mission was probably more urgent than they’d thought it would be.

Nile had originally begged Andy to just find a way to send Solomon a message, tell him not to trust Merrick or anything connected to them. But it would have been too dangerous. Andy had told her it had to be a coincidence. Even though her gut told her it wasn’t. It wasn’t until Copley found out that Kozak had been sighted at the Chicago branch, that Andy had gone from being quietly paranoid, to making Copley get them a military transport to the US as soon as possible. And yet it seemed even that hadn’t been quick enough. 

She closed her eyes, fearing that this was going to be yet another piece of guilt to carry with her for the rest of her life. Even if that life was no longer as everlasting as it had once seemed. She hoped that it would take a long, long time before Nile would come to realize what a blessing that was. The girl was like a bright spot of light in the group, that Andy had never realized was missing. 

She wasn’t like Nicky, so desperate to believe that the world could be better, so hopeful that anything they did made a difference. Who’d so genuinely and almost naively had believed in a cause that had led him astray. Pulled into darkness, because of his desire to do good, rather than despite of it. Nile… she was far more cynical. Nile saw the darkness in the world, she’d felt it as much as the rest of them had. But she believed that they had a duty to fight that darkness, to stand up to it. 

It’s not that Nile was naïve, far from it. She’d grown up as a warrior, long before she became a soldier. Growing up black in a city like Chicago, the eldest daughter in a lower middle class family, with her father long dead, the army had been her only way out. Nile told her about all the jobs she used to have, security guard, retail, web designer, most of which were just barely enough to get you through the month. She’d been hoping that after her time in the marines, she’d be able to go to college, take art classes. And now all that was gone, forcing her into a life of war that had only ever been supposed to be a means to an end. And Andy had at most only a few decades to help the kid come to grips with it. 

If her lack of priorities cost Nile her brother’s life, it wouldn’t just be Andy who’d have to live with it.

It had been easier with the others.

She hadn’t even met Nicky and Joe, until a century after they died. By the time she’d met her little brothers, they’d long since dealt with their family’s mortality. And Book… God Booker, he’d rejected her advice, gone back to his family, even after they’d advised him not to. But at least they’d tried, and he’d been there for them. Even as his sons threw it in his face, as if it had been a failing. She could blame herself for a lot, but even booker knew that hadn’t been her fault.

This though, this was different.

“Mom left a message, asking any of Sol’s friends if they’ve heard from him.” Nile said, fear clear in her voice. “Maybe… maybe we should contact her. One of you, I mean. Tell her we’re investigating, ask her what she knows?”

Send a message to Copley, tell him to get papers ready. “Think he could make us NCIS?”

Nile looked at her startled, and started laughing. “They investigate marines don’t they?”

“Marines, yes, brothers of dead marines, not so much;”

“Pff, most people wouldn’t have a clue what all those letterbox agencies stand for to begin with. And Gibbs always seems to get involved with whatever case the show comes up with.”

Andy could see Nile smiling, knowing perfectly well it was her fault that Andy had binge watched the show along with her. Andy couldn’t help it, she liked Gibbs. And Abby reminded her of Quynh when she’d been younger; so curious, so eager to prove herself, to show she could not just keep up, but do better than her elder. Well, Andy being the only ‘elder’ Qyunh had left, but nobody ever realized that, and they all expected her to be soft and vulnerable, two things Quynh had only been for Andy herself.

She leaned back into her seat, gently touching Nile for a second before letting go. 

“We’ll find him. We’ll get him home safe. We’ll make sure of it.”

It wasn’t a promise she should be making. But Nile needed it, and so Andy couldn’t refuse her. She just had to make sure not to break it.


	5. Chapter 5

5.

Quynh had to force herself to keep breathing. In, and out, and in and out. Booker said it would help. Booker was a liar. They’d taken what the Frenchman called a first class ticket. It didn’t help. But at least they weren’t sitting in the middle of a crowd of people, with mortals far too close to her, ready to touch her, grab her, throw her in the ocean again.

She didn’t dare sleep like Booker suggested she should do. Terrified that if she went to sleep, she’d wake up back in the coffin, to find out that her escape in the world above had been nothing more than a dream in her dying.

She forced a smile on her face, holding on to Booker’s arm, she could see him cringe under her touch. But she couldn’t bring herself to relax.

These airplanes were foul, the air tasted stale and the sounds surrounding her were almost deafening, even in the quiet.

Sebastien was still so frail, still somewhat scared of her. She couldn’t blame him, she’d been pretty angry when she first found him. She couldn’t even say whom she was angry with, Andromache for giving up on looking for her, Sebastien for betraying Andromache, for almost killing her. The horrifying notion that she could have broken out of her underwater prison, only to find her Anh lost to time, like they’d lost Lykon. And all because of this … man who thought he knew what pain was. 

He hadn’t even fought her when she punished him, when she held his head underwater in the bath with the magical water that never ran out, warm, then cold, then warm again. He knew he deserved it, and that made it worse.

That look on his face. “It’s fine, I deserve this.” He didn’t even need to say the words to make her pull back in horror at what she’d become. At the touch of blood on her fingers as she held him down, her nails cutting into his skin.

She’d sat there, huddled against the wall, him pulling his head up for air, before landing in front of the bathtub, curled up, but not running, not even trying to escape her. 

She didn’t want to be a monster. Not to this little brother who’d been so lost, not to Andromache who might hate her for hurting one of their own, even after what he’d done. She wondered what Nicolo and Yusuf would think of her now.

What their new little sister would think. She was almost glad she hadn’t found her first.

She missed them, all of them, she hated them, she feared their reaction, to find out that she was back, what she’d become. The monster that her tormentors had believed her to be.

She almost startled out of her seat as a woman came too close. She almost grabbed her by the throat. If Booker hadn’t been there, she would have. She knew he wanted to drink; beer, whiskey, brandy, it didn’t matter, he just wanted to get lost. She didn’t let him.

He told her about the exile. About the punishment the others had decided on. And now, they needed him back, and he didn’t understand why. All he’d wanted to do was jump at Andromache’s command and let her use him, however she saw fit. 

Quynh didn’t get it either. 

Punishments should be clear, like the one she’d given him the first time he’d tried to get drunk after she found him. He still twitched at the merest glimpse of alcohol, she’d made sure of that. And yet it hurt her to have him be scared of her. She didn’t want him to be scared. She leant up to him, resting up against him, and he let her, sitting there awkwardly.

“Sleep”, she whispered.

“What about you.”

“I’ve slept long enough.”

“Sleep, little brother. Sleep.”

He finally dozed off, his body trembling. His skin felt warm to the touch, far warmer than it should be. Was that because she’d gotten too used to the cold of the ocean? She wasn’t sure. They still had half a day to go. She stared outside at the sun, resting in its rays through the glass, wishing she could tear down the walls, fighting the urge to doze off.

She failed, the coffin awaited her.

  
  
  


*****   
  


Booker grabbed their suitcases and paperwork to be allowed to bring guns into the country ready in his backpack. Quynh’s new compound bow was in her luggage. She’d looked so amazed when she’d held it in her hands. He’d wanted to get her a gun, but she refused. They stank too much. 

He wondered if he imagined the smell of salt and sea clinging to her skin.

When he’d received the call from Copley he thought it had to be a joke, a lie, a dream. He’d refused to accept that it was real. But then Andy called, and he’d gone to get his bag. It wasn’t until he saw Quynh that he froze. She asked why he’d go. He hadn’t been able to answer.

But if Andy wanted him, he’d go, even if it was just so she could kick him back out the second she saw him.

Booker had been researching everything he could find on Kozak. The kind of research he should have done last time, before he’d handed his family over to be tortured by her. 

The worst part is how squeaky clean Kozak’s reputation seemed at first sight. She was a well-respected doctor, a geneticist, with a side interest in endocrinology and hematology. He wondered how many of her co-workers had known she was a mad scientist, and had been ok with it because, after all, she got results.

It wasn’t until you looked into her, that you could find evidence of handouts to former test subjects, money given to keep people quiet after they took part in one of her bits of research.

And that was with subjects she’d seen as humans.

He was an idiot, and a bastard, and she’d tortured Nicky and Joe because of it.

Quynh hadn’t even left him a choice about leaving her behind. He wanted to call Andy back, warn her, but Quynh told him not to. She wasn’t ready for it yet. He couldn’t leave her behind though, not with how messed up she was. It was best for her to focus on him, on hurting him, than to let her go loose on someone else, someone innocent. 

She was finally sleeping when he woke up. He let her, stroking his fingers through her hair like he’d done for his wife once upon a time. She was shaking in her dreams, caught in her nightmares. He wished he could save her from them, take them for her. He wondered how many of his and Nile’s dreams had been her nightmares, even after she’d escaped. She hadn’t said.

He managed to fall asleep again, lost in dreams where Joe or Nicky would just glare at him, their eyes dead and lost, the anger long gone, along with their spirit, all because of him. All because of his selfishness. 

By the time he woke up, Quynh was sitting near the cockpit. It was clear the flight crew had gotten too scared to go anywhere near her and get her back to her seat. He hadn’t even noticed she’d left. Sloppy.

His hand was shaking. His immortality might keep him from dying of the physical consequences of detoxing from alcohol, but it didn’t save him from it entirely. He could see the stewardesses offer booze to those awake, but Quynh had made it quite clear what she’d do to him, if he gave in to temptation.

He was too scared of what she might do to others if he didn’t keep her focus on him, to even think of her threats of what she’d do to him.

She looked so small, but Nicky and Joe’s stories about her hadn’t even come close to doing her justice.

He got up from his chair and went up to her, kneeling down beside her. He didn’t know what to say, what she needed to hear. He just wishes she’d let him at least warn Andy. 

The last thing Andy, or any of the others, needed from him was another surprise. Even one like this one. Had Nile dreamt of the two of them? He hoped she had. But then again, the dreams had never been that specific. Not for him at least. He stared at his hand, watching it fade and blur. 

He tried to think of that first time he’d seen Nile. The dreams they’d all had of her. The others had seen details, all he’d gotten was that feel of her throat being slit, her fear at dying, not for herself, but because of what it would do to her family.

He’d understood that fear all too well. It’s what he’d felt when he’d died in that noose. Not scared of death, but of knowing that he’d abandoning his family. That they’d have to go on without him, not even a pension left to tide them over, because as a deserter he’d lost any rights for them to be looked out for after his death.

He’d cried for his sons that day, for the life they’d have, their father dead, their mother destitute and alone, all because of him. He remembered all that as he felt Nile’s dying breath go out to her brother, and wanting to keep him safe. Free… something or other. And now the boy was in danger as well. All because of him. Because he’d been so desperate to die, that he hadn’t even thought of anything beyond his own pain.

“Qu'est-ce que j'ai fait?”

  
  
  


*********

  
  


Carlton looked at the screen, at the data Dr Kozak was sending him. He’d never been a scientist. His knowledge of it had been outdated even decades ago, when he’d first invested into pharmaceuticals. But he knew how to hire people who did know what they were talking about. 

Kozak had sent him a comparison of the boy’s DNA with a DNA test on the blood of the marine. It hadn’t been hard to get access to Freeman’s marine files; blood work, physical tests, all of them done before she’d died, before she resurrected. 

In a way the girl was far more useful to them than the older ones. The older ones were priceless of course, they all were. But the girl… they actually had medical information on her from before that they could then compare to after, to see what had changed. What had been triggered in her blood, in her body, to start the immortality? It was something they wouldn’t ever get from any of the others. 

The girl didn’t even look all that special. Just your typical ghetto brat. Stupid enough to join the army, thinking it would make her worth something. At least once they’d get her hands on her she might actually make a difference. She should be grateful. But he figured that like his children, she’d be too busy blaming them for whatever imagined hurt she’d lay at his feet, to think of all he’d done for her. Nothing was ever enough, now was it?


	6. Chapter 6

6.

  
  


The world had become a swirl of pain. Doctor Kozak had told him she had to take some samples. He’d begged her to let him go, but she wasn’t listening. He still didn’t understand why she was doing this. 

She’d explained, what mad scientist didn’t. Except that her explanation made no sense. Nile was dead. 

Except that Kozak seemed to think Nile was not only still alive, but that she had the same kind of regenerative capacity that the donor of those blood cells had.

It was insane. Hell, Sol remembered how Nile had broken her leg trying to show off her balance when she’d been twelve, six years older than Sol himself. He remembered running to get Mom, terrified because of how much pain Nile had been in. Or that time she’d hit her head skating. There had been so much blood coming out of it.

If Nile were some kind of … mutant with healing powers, wouldn’t she have healed from that right away? Then again, in the comics, mutant powers usually didn’t appear until they hit adolescence. And maybe… maybe Nile had been a late bloomer. Who could possibly know how those kinds of powers would work?

This was real life after all, not a comic book.

The worst part of it all was that if this were a comic book, his chances of getting out of this were pretty slim. He was just the barely named family member, with no use for the story beyond what losing him would mean to Nile. He just hoped she’d be smart enough to stay away, because Kozak was plain out nuts. She was worse than a Karen. She’d surpassed Karenhood, and gone straight on to coocoonuts.

She was going on about Immortality, and how the research of some guy called Copley had hinted at these ‘donors’ being hundreds of years old. It scared Sol, thinking of Nile like that. The idea that if, and that’s a big if, if his sister were still alive, if she really was one of these people, and IF she was healing like that, then… then there’d be a day he could no longer protect her. She’d outlive him, and Mom. 

And yes, Nile would be stupid and think she had to protect him, but that was just crazy talk. 

Well, okay, maybe they were supposed to take care of one another. That’s what Dad would have wanted. Just… the idea that one day she’d outlive him, not just by a few years, but by centuries? For her to be all alone like that, he didn’t even want to think of his River girl being on her own for centuries upon centuries. Nile needed her family, her connections. Cut off from all that, was she even their Nile anymore?

They were Freemans, that’s what they did; make sure their family was ok.

And if Nile even thought she was gonna get out of explaining to Mom, how she could possibly let them think she was dead, then she had a whole other thing coming. 

He cringed as Kozak touched him and pulled the needle out of him, bandaging the injury she’d just caused.

“It’s interesting, my boy. If I’d done this to your sister, or one of the others, they’d already be healing before the needle was even out.”

He couldn’t stop tears from falling. It hurt, damn it. 

“Once we have your sister here next to you, I will be able to compare your DNA to hers. If the computer can find out what differentiates between your genetic code and hers, that may well lead to an end of Death itself. Could you imagine?” 

She’d said that one before. And it still sounded insane. By now, he didn’t even remotely care what she thought to get out of it, he just wanted out of here, to go back home and pretend he’d never accepted that damn internship. To be safe, and to tell Mom, to… to yell at Nile, to … Fuck, even if he got out of this, he was stuck, wasn’t he? He couldn’t tell Mom till he had Nile with him, and he couldn’t yell at Nile unless he found her, and with Kozak after her, he hoped she never showed up. Because the last thing, the very last thing he wanted, was for his big sister to end up on that table next to his.

  
  


*****   
  


  
  


They’d landed at a private airfield, over an hour ago. Nile had tried to sleep on the flight, but her dreams were confusing. She’d dreamt of Quynh in the water, but also of Booker in the water, and Quynh’s hands holding him down. She wanted to ask the others if this was normal, linking the ‘Dreams’ with her regular lowercase dreams.

She wasn’t quite sure what to think of how they’d be meeting Booker soon.

It’s not that she didn’t want to see him, she knew how much the others missed him, how much she missed him. She’d only known him for a few days, and even in those few days, he’d been betraying all of them. And yet, it wasn’t just that he was one of theirs. He was the only one, who, like her, understood what it was to be the youngest among people hundreds of years older than herself. He was the one who still remembered his family’s faces, for whom mortal life wasn’t a long distant memory. It simply didn't feel right to have him be away from the rest of them. It’s just… it wasn’t fair to Booker to call him in for something like this, and then expect him to just leave again once they didn’t need him anymore. Booker might have done wrong, but he didn’t deserve to be used like that.

Booker would be waiting for them at the airport. Andy said he hadn’t even hesitated to come and help them. Well, once he believed that the rest of them actually wanted him to come that is. 

Booker hadn’t dared believe that they’d want to see him for anything. Not when the call came from Copley. He said he didn’t want to screw things up more by showing up when the others obviously wouldn’t want him there.

Joe hadn’t said anything when Copley told them that. But somehow the tension in him had lowered a bit at the words. Nicky and him had been softly arguing in Arabic, and Nile’s Derja wasn’t near good enough to keep up with it.

Andy then made the call before whatever the two of them were arguing about was resolved. The call went out for Booker’s flight, and the four of them headed to the arrival hall. Nile felt naked without her gun, but they all knew they couldn’t take the risk to carry, not with the attention it might attract to them.

Booker came out, his bag slung over his shoulder, stopping for a second to show his papers before continuing on in their direction. He was in the middle of the crowd, shielding his eyes from the light above them, before he spotted them and headed their way. There was a woman walking next to him, but at first Nile thought she was just a tourist, heading towards her own family, probably the people behind them. The woman was talking with Booker, who seemed to be arguing about something. It wasn’t until Andy froze next to her that Nile really started paying attention to the stranger dressed in red. 

“Quynh.” One syllable coming from Nicky, it sounded like everything around them went quiet and dark, as if Booker and his companion were the only people left in the world. Andy stood there frozen like a deer in headlights, her hands trembling.

Andy looked like she was about ready to collapse, forcing herself to keep standing by sheer force of will. Nile wanted to reach out to her, give the ancient something to hang on to. But she feared that doing so might make things worse.

She remembered the anger, the fear in her dreams, and tried to combine it to the beautiful woman coming towards them. Because Quyhn was beautiful, dressed up as if for a winter fashion shoot, catching people’s eyes, like a flame did with air. 

The tension filled the air between them, as if no one knew what to say or do anymore.

“Ahn.” Was all Quynh said before grabbing Andy’s face, staring in her eyes. Nile didn’t understand the language she spoke in. Andy did though, and Nile shivered at the sorrow in Andy’s voice, the guilt lacing every word. She didn’t need to understand to know just what Andy was saying. Quynh looked like she was deciding between snapping Andy’s neck and kissing her. Tension broke as she decided on the latter. The two of them didn’t come up for air for minutes. 

That’s when Quynh turned to Joe and Nicky, saying something else. The hug between the four of them almost made her cry. She stared at Booker. He looked hesitant. A smile formed.

“You really are evil, aren’t you?”

He looked at her, as if asking what she meant. “Coming back with the best make up gift ever. There is no way I’ll ever be able to top that one, if I ever screw anything up.”

His gesture made it quite clear how he felt on that.

That’s when Quynh turned to her. 

Nile wasn’t sure what to say. Almost feeling like an outsider, like she was trying to push herself somewhere she didn’t belong. 

“It’s nice to see the girl that brought life back in my Ahn’s eyes,” was the first thing Qyunh said to her. Nile shivered. Quynh smiled, but there was something behind the smile, something dangerous, something slightly mad, and yet… something vulnerable as well. Maybe good things did happen? She could hope, right? She could hope that things would get better, that Qyunh’s return was a good thing.

She didn’t know, she couldn’t know. 

“Hi.” She said, giving a tiny wave at the woman in front of her.

Quynh pulled her in, her mouth whispering in Nile’s ear. “I had a brother once. I don’t remember his face, not exactly. I just remember that he was beautiful. His smile, when he laughed it sounded like bells were ringing. Every girl in our town was halfway in love with him, every boy wanted to be his friend. And when I died and came back, he sang for me. He made me believe that everything was going to be just fine, that I was a princess born out of a tale of legends. But nobody ever said legends end happily. The men in my village, they thought my brother was like me. They didn’t want a woman for a leader, they wanted a man, they thought that if he was like me, he could be their king. I begged them to leave him be, he was just a boy. But they didn’t listen, they killed him. And then they waited for a week, two weeks, three weeks, longer, and each day his beauty faded more and more. And I wept over his body, every single day, praying that whatever had given me this… gift, would take it back and give it to him. But every day his beauty rotted more and more, until finally I could not take it anymore, and I ran.” Nile stared at her in horror, terrified to even pull away from Quynh “Your brother is a beautiful boy. He has a smile like my brother did. We shall not allow his beauty to rot like my brother’s did.”


	7. Chapter 7

7.

  
  


Ronell let her finger gently slide past her daughter’s picture, and sent off a prayer for her husband to look after Nile. She wanted to scream at God, to beg him, why take my daughter like this? She wished she could just…wipe out the past few years, stop Nile from ever signing up for the marines. Keep her little girl safely at home, where she belonged. Tell her to just take a job, any job. Tell her she’d put herself in debt so Nile could go to college. 

But no, Nile had always done what Nile wanted to do. No matter what anyone told her, even her own mother. It had been one of the things she’d always been most proud of. 

And now Solomon was missing. The police said that since he was an adult, there was nothing they could do. There was no evidence that anything had happened. His friends said he’d gone off to work, to his internship like every day. He’d just never returned. The company said he’d left around noon, and hadn’t shown up again the next day.

The police told her to just check with his friends, see if he’d gotten a girlfriend, or if he’d just gotten drunk, or drugged up, and was too embarrassed to show himself. She’d almost hit the bastard in the face when he dared tell her that.

What did they care. He was just another twenty something black kid. It didn’t matter to them that Sol was a straight A student with a full scholarship. It didn’t matter to them that Sol had never missed even a second at school, and that he’d worked two jobs during his first year at college, just to make sure neither her or Nile had to help him with money for expenses. It didn’t even matter that he’d never disappear for so long, especially without even a word to her. They just didn’t care enough to go look for him.

She wanted to slam something against the floor, break something, tear something to pieces. But doing that wouldn’t help anyone, so she didn’t.

Last year, she’d had two children, the light in her life. Now… her eldest was gone, and her youngest, she could only pray he wasn’t gone as well.

When the doorbell rang, she sat stunned. For a moment unsure if she even wanted to open the door, but then she jumped up, what if it was Sol? What if he’d lost his key?

She opened the door and there were two strangers standing there. A white man with short brown hair and piercing blue eyes dressed in an ill-fitting jacket and a pair of baggy jeans. There was something eerie about him, an air that made him seem far older than the thirty or so that he seemed to be. The man next to him had curly black hair and a well-trimmed beard. There was a twinkle in his eyes, like he’d smile if he wasn’t making sure to look serious. Unlike his partner, who seemed to look like he’d shopped in the Sears catalogue, this guy looked like an actor, someone with a stylist to tell him how to put something on and make it look good no matter what he was wearing.

“Mrs. Freeman?”

“Yes?” 

The two of them pulled badges out of their coats before the white man started talking.

“My Name is Agent Nicholas Smith. This is my partner, Joseph Jones. We’re with NCIS. We were hoping to talk to you about the missing person’s report you filed for your son Solomon.” He said it in a clear accent that made her wonder if he was even American.

She took another look at the two.

“Are you serious?”

“Ma’am?”

“Does that agency even exist for real? Like, in real life?” She joked about it, remembering her friends thinking it had to be made up, when the show first started.

“You have no idea how often we get asked that.” Agent Jones responded. His lips fighting off a smirk

“We heard about your son and his disappearance sounded suspicious. We were hoping to ask you some questions.”

She wasn’t sure why she even let them in. She should have just slammed the door in their faces. With those names that sounded fake, and a story of checking into a case that, based on what she knew, NCIS would have no reason to get involved with. And yet, they were the first seemingly official people who sounded even the slightest bit interested in what had happened to Sol. And hope was a hard thing to fight off.

They sat down in her kitchen, as she set some coffee, offering them a cup. They accepted. Jones took two extra scoops of sugar, while Smith added some crème to his.

Jones sat down at her kitchen counter, while Smith kept standing next to him. She couldn’t help but notice how they both seemed on guard. It reminded her of her husband. The way he’d always seemed to be ready for an attack, how she’d had to be careful not to approach him from behind, or be careful of harsh noises, until he calmed down again. It wasn’t constant, and she prayed to God the kids didn’t notice, but Victor had been hurt by his time in duty, long before it killed him. 

NCIS were navy cops. Did that mean they were former marines? Gone into law enforcements after a tour of duty? She wasn’t sure. 

Smith sounded almost gentle as he asked his questions. When had she last talked to her son? What was the name of the place he was working for? Did he have any friends who worked there? Did she know the name of his immediate superior, the position he’d applied for? She wondered if she imagined the way Jones flinched when she said the name Merrick. It was barely noticeable, but she was an expert after being married to a man who’d always refused to admit how much the war had hurt him. How much he hated having to go back, but he was a fighter, her Victor. And he’d do what her family needed. 

She couldn’t help but think how he’d never have wanted Nile to sign up, and if he’d lived, he’d have made sure she didn’t. No matter how many extra hours he’d have had to put in, to make sure of it.

There was something about these men, a sense of understanding, of concern. Something she’d never felt when talking to the man behind the desk that she’d tried to talk to when she first realized Sol wasn’t answering his phone. A lack of concern that had gotten worse with each passing day she’d returned to the station.

“Sol didn’t even expect to get that internship.” She whispered. “He hadn’t even signed up for it. It was only supposed to be meant for grad students. He was so proud. He said Doctor Kozak was an expert in her field, that he’d be honored just meeting her.”

Jones flinched again on the name of the doctor. He knew something. And the way Smith put his hand on Jones shoulder, so did he.

“What’s going on? The truth. Why are you here? And who is this Doctor?”

“Mrs. Freeman.” 

“I’m a marine’s wife, mister. I know how NCIS work. They wouldn’t get involved in this unless an active duty marine was involved. They wouldn’t get involved over a dead marine’s little brother. No matter what danger he was in.”

“It’s complicated.”

“Fuck complicated! My son is missing, I already lost my daughter. I can’t lose him too.”

“I promise you, Mrs. Freeman, we will bring him home.”

“I just need to…” she was pissed now, pissed, and ready to start crying, and she wasn’t sure what she wanted to say or do, but she knew these men were keeping something from her. Even if their concern was real. And maybe that made it worse, that they did care, but they were still lying to her.

“Doctor Kozak worked for Merrick Pharmaceuticals in London.” Jones said

“And…”

“Merrick has been involved in business that we can’t quite talk about. One of those involved your daughter.”

Ronnell remembered getting the news that Nile was missing. Someone had asked her if Nile had tried to contact her. Trying to reach Nile’s friends, the way they’d cut the call short, pretended they couldn’t stay on the line. As if they were avoiding her, as if they didn’t want to even think about Nile. And then a few days later the news had dropped. That her daughter had died in the line of duty. Having that same doubt that she wasn’t being told something.

“Did they take my little girl? Did they kill her?” The men didn’t answer.

Jones got up from his seat, he faced her, looked her straight in the eye.

“We will bring your son home. You have my word on that.” Jones' partner just stood behind him, but it was clear his eyes said the same thing. 

She wrung her eyes shut to fight off tears. She managed to do so until after they left. 

They hadn’t said it was classified, they hadn’t said anything about national security being involved, they didn’t tell her not to contact the press. And yet she just sat there, unsure what more she could do now.

It was almost worse than not knowing anything.

She picked up her phone. Her hand hesitated at the name. She wondered why it was even still in her phone. She hadn’t called Fred in a long, long time. Not since he’d cheated on her best friend. 

“Ronell?”

“Fred, I…”

“What do you need?” He didn’t end the call. Instead he listened as she told him about the strange men who’d come at her door. At their claim to be NCIS. At all the oddities. 

“I don’t know who those guys were Ronnie, but they’re not NCIS. If our guys were working on a case involving Nile, let alone Sol’s disappearance, I would have let you know. I swear I would have.”

“I know, Fred.”

“And I am sorry. Hurting Suzie like I did… It was the stupidest thing I ever did. The worst mistake of my life.” 

Ronnell hesitated, trying not to think of how once upon a time the four of them, her, Victor, Suzie and Fred, had been the best of friends. Almost like family. Fred had been there for her after Victor died. Her sole support, even more so than Suze, who hadn’t even known what to do or say. When Fred tore up his marriage, he’d torn up their family. And it was that, more than the cheating, that she’d never been able to forgive him for. 

“But why would they lie about something like that?”

“I don’t know. Yet. But when I find them, they’ll pay for it. I promise.”

Ronnell checked the card the false agents had left behind. 

“Now tell me everything you remember about them.”

She started with a description.


	8. Chapter 8

8.

  
  


Booker sat on the side. Staring at the laptop felt like punishment. But since he deserved to be punished, that wasn’t too bad. The thing was open on the personnel files. He’d gone through them multiple times, trying to find warning signs of what Kozak was working on, the amount of money and labs she’d been given by her new employer, and who of the people in charge was paying attention to her work. Copley had helped him get into some of the passwords, making his work far easier than it would be otherwise. 

The American version of Merrick Pharmaceuticals was run by Carlton Merrick, Steven Merrick’s grandfather. A man who hadn’t even gone over to London to be there for his grandson’s funeral. He’d just demanded for all the data of the London branch to be sent over to his office in the US before shutting down everything his grandson had been working at and sending his son to salvage the remnants before firing everyone that had worked in the building. With that, he'd pillaged the remains and bulldozed over whatever the younger Merrick had managed to build in his grandfather’s name.

Not that Booker cared. Merrick deserved to be lost to history. But it was harsh for any man to just ignore his own blood like that. Even after his own children had died, Booker had kept track of his grandchildren, and then his great-grandchildren, and so on, until now. He might have smartened up enough to leave them be. But he knew exactly where they were, and he had people ready to inform him if they ever needed anything, whether it was money, housing or legal help. As far as they knew they just got lucky. Or they had a good guardian angel. He didn’t care what they thought of it, just that they were taken care of. Even if he’d never go talk to them again. There were fifteen of them left in the present day, and most of them didn’t know of one another. At most they’d met other strangers who had the same eyes, the same nose. There was little to no connection between any of them. The family had fallen apart after his wife had died. But they were safe, and happy, and that was all that mattered. It wouldn’t be any good for them to find out that they were related to the likes of him.

Nile had been scouring her brother’s social media, and that of his friends and anyone that might know him. Checking to see if there was any trace of him left. People online were getting worried. Some people feared he might have pissed off a cop, that he was bleeding in a ditch somewhere. Others denied that, said that if a cop had attacked Sol, that he’d be in jail now with the cops claiming he’d attacked an officer. 

He remembered how the police had looked at him when he first came home from the war. The suspicion in their eyes. How they’d glared at his boys, people wondering how he’d managed to return when so many of their sons and brothers died in la Grande Armée. He’d faked an injury to over up for his desertion, his death. 

Too many hadn’t believed it. And it had made life hard on his wife and sons, far harder even than it would have been if he’d never returned. 

Booker's hands were trembling. He shivered, grabbing an extra blanket, as his heart hammered in his throat. He recognized the symptoms, but tried not to let them stop him. It wasn’t like he hadn’t read up on the risks of alcohol withdrawal after the others had left him. He knew that if he ever wanted them to take him back, he’d have to stop drinking. 

He’d considered it, but over and over again he’d delayed it. What was the point when the others wouldn’t be there? And then Quynh had shown up and taken the choice out of his hands.

He figured he’d be OK. He was immortal, it’s not like it could kill him. But over and over again the symptoms kept coming back. Fever, confusion. Half the time he was barely even aware where he was, the rest of the time he fluttered between the past and the present. He barely dared to eat, fearing that anything he put into his body, would come out just as fast. And the rest of it… 

It wasn’t like he hadn’t already wanted to die. 

Quynh seemed to be a fan of the school of hard rocks. She hadn’t read up on the latest research in regards to addiction, she just saw him losing himself in booze and figured she’d save him from it. And the worst part was that, no matter what suffering it caused him, he deserved far worse than whatever it could do to him.

Carlton Merrick was actually in the city at the moment. Ready to oversee some new company project led by noted scientist Meta Kozak. Which meant he knew. Which meant he was probably getting ready to set a trap for all of them. 

And if Booker told them, it would lead them all into danger just as surely as he’d done half a year ago, when he’d betrayed the team. But if he didn’t. If he betrayed their trust and lied about what he found, it would be a million times worse.

“When did you stop drinking?” Booker startled up.

“What?” Nicky stood over him. Booker hadn’t even noticed him coming closer.

“I … I just…”

“Oh, Book.” Nicky’s hand touched his forehead and Booker almost flinched at the touch.

“I found …”

“I can see that. I can also see that you need to be in bed.”

Booker wanted to protest, but Nicky wouldn’t let him. Nicky was guiding him to the bed, and Booker was too weak to stop him, the man even held him up, and kept him from getting vomit all over himself as he finally let go and lost whatever water he’d managed to drink on the plane.

“You know better.” Nicky’s soft tones sounded a bit like Sebastien’s mother had when she called him a fool for staying up sick, and put him to bed as a kid 

He tried to resist, but there was no fighting Nicky when he was in full on mother hen mode. Five minutes later, Nile, Andy and even Joe were recruited to keep an eye on Booker. Ten minutes later, Booker had two more blankets, a bucket next to his bed, and Andy giving him some of the meds she’d been given when she herself had stopped drinking. Something about her liver no longer being able to handle the alcohol she’d been pickling herself with for the past six thousand years.

Booker tried to tell them again about Carlton Merrick, about Kozak. Andy hushed him, told him Nile was already on it. Quynh was sitting in the corner, staring at him, seemingly confused. Her eyes didn’t close until Andy started singing.

Booker wondered, had Carlton Merrick ever sang to his son, to his grandson? Had he ever cared enough to read him stories? And if he had, how could he have let his grandson be buried on foreign ground, without even a hint of interest in his own flesh and blood’s death.

  
  


*****

  
  


Nile took over the computer from Booker. It scared her to see him like that. Even knowing he most likely wouldn’t die from it. She’d seen it before, alcohol withdrawal. Quynh looked like she felt guilty about it. 

“I didn’t mean to hurt him.” she whispered. Joe gave her a look. “I just wanted him to stop killing himself with the spirits. It’s not good for a man to drink that much.”

Joe patted Booker’s leg. He looked almost soft, confused.

“He didn’t have to listen;”

‘I threatened him. I told him I would drown him in a bath of alcohol next if I found him touching another bottle.” Nile flinched. “I hurt him, bad. He let me.”

“Quynh.”

“He hurt Andy, and I could have lost her, forever. And it reminded me so much of the men that took her from me. And I wanted to hurt someone. He let me, he shouldn’t have let me, but he did. And then I saw all the spirits in his apartment, and he was letting them hurt him as well.”

“He’s been lost for a long time.” Joe said.

Joe’s fingers moved through his beard before he got up and moved away from Booker. Accepting the cup of soup that Nicky held out for him, before his husband took a second one to Booker, making him sip from it. Even if he seemed to have a hard time holding anything in.

It was what family meant, wasn’t it? You got angry, sometimes you held grudges, but when it came down to it, you took care of one another. Sometimes in all the wrong ways, but still.

“Booker wasn’t wrong. It seems like Merrick’s grandfather is the one running the operation that took Sol. He seems to be in charge of everything.”

“So we’re dealing with another Merrick.” Andy said. Her eyes never left Quynh, almost as if she expected the other woman to disappear if she let her out of her sight. Quynh reached out to her, and Andy sat down next to her. They weren’t like Joe and Nicky, who’d have just cuddled right there and then. 

But the way they sat there, next to one another, mere inches apart, they felt like they belonged together, one half slightly broken and dented, the other so clearly polished it had nearly lost its original coloring. But far too obviously a pair.

  
  



	9. Chapter 9

9.

  
  


Solomon sat on the slab in what looked far too much like a jail cell. There was a toilet and sink attached to the wall, a small empty desk. And an empty bookshelf. The place looked like it was originally designed to be a quarantine unit, turned into a cage.

His hand went through his dreads, he knew they had to look terrible. He’d been sweaty all day. He was terrified, he wasn’t ashamed to admit it, he hadn’t been able to wash his hair in days, and though he had a sink, he worried that he had no products, to put in them, and no hairdryer to make sure his hair dried up all the way through. He’d spent so long growing them, but with the way things were going, he feared he was going to have to take them out, maybe even cut them off, before he had to start all over with them.

They hadn’t even let him keep his glasses.

As if he’d use them to dig his way out of his cell or, just as likely, try to hurt himself with them. When all he wanted to do was take a good look at his hair and see how bad it had gotten by now. Just the feel of it was bad enough as it were.

He shivered in the hospital clothes they’d given him. At least it wasn’t too itchy, but that didn’t make it comfortable, and he hated how the shirt was open in the back, and the stretch pants were a size too large. Not that anyone had cared about that.

Sol wondered if anyone aside of Kozak and her guards even knew he was here. If anything happened to her, would anyone care to get him out? Or would they just put a bullet in his head and make him disappear. Not like he wasn’t missing already.

The room was tiny, it barely took three large or four small steps to go from left to right, and a mere five steps to go from the door, to the back where the toilet was. The place wasn’t meant for long-term use, and it was noticeable. 

There was no privacy either. Every hour or so a guard passed by the plexiglass barrier keeping the cell closed, and looked inside to see what Sol was doing. He’d waved at the guy the first few times. But had gotten bored with it pretty quick.

From where he was sitting, he could see at least three other cells on the other side of the hall. And there were probably two more next to his. He wondered if that’s where they were planning to keep Nile, and the others who were like her. The ‘dangerous’ ones that the guards seemed to be so scared of.

Sol wondered if Nile even knew them. Kozak said she’d helped ‘steal’ them. As if you could steal a person. But that didn’t have to mean anything, not if the others had been treated as Kozak was treating Solomon himself.

He lifted his shirt, and stared at where she’d cut him open, before sewing him up again. She said she had to take samples from his kidneys and gall. All he knew was that it had hurt like hell, and she hadn’t even bothered to sedate him for it. She said it might impact the results. He wasn’t a fighter. He was just a student who wanted to be a doctor, go into medicine, find cures for diseases. But if that meant becoming anything like Kozak, he was seriously considering a different career path.

Mom had to be worried sick, having him ghost her like that, disappearing without a word. Especially so soon after Nile…

What had Nile been thinking? 

Not one text message, not a single call. Letting them believe she was dead?

He’d missed her, he still did. He wanted to hug her and slap her and yell at her. But most of all, he wanted her to be safe. And it scared him how angry he was at her for doing this to them.

******   
  


  
  


Nicky looked at Joe, they’d received a call from Mrs. Freeman, telling them she’d remembered something. The others were waiting for them in the car, hopefully out of sight. Nicky held Joe’s hand for a second before leaving the car. Something felt off.

He straightened up his coat a bit before moving to the door. Joe was right behind him. The both of them were armed, and ready for anything. From how tensed up Joe was, Nicky knew that he could feel something off as well.

He still rang the bell, ready for an attack. What he wasn’t ready for was Mrs. Freeman opening the door, letting them in, only for a bunch of people in suits, to be waiting for them.

Nicky instantly tried to look for exits. He’d already seen most of them, last time they were in the house. But there hadn’t been men in the way of them last time. And regardless of their need to escape, he couldn’t afford to risk Mrs. Freeman’s life.

“Fred Williams, NCIS. Now mind telling me, gentlemen, what branch of our agency you’re supposedly a member of?”

“Al’alama!” Joe grunted out. Nicky couldn’t help but agree. They both were ready to make a run for it. There were about five, no, six NCIS agents in the room, as well as Mrs. Freeman. And they couldn’t really harm any of them. As far as these people knew they were just a bunch of imposters, attempting to take advantage of a grieving mother’s worries about her son. They weren’t the bad guys. Just an imposition. 

Guns weren’t out yet, but they would be in a second. 

“I’m sure we can talk about this.” Joe said. He was always the one better at languages, especially where English was concerned. Joe knew better how to put strangers at ease. No matter how hard Nicky tried, he always felt out of place in conversation. People had called him odd more than once.

“Yes, let’s do that. Let’s explain why you would impersonate a federal officer. And why I shouldn’t arrest the both of you, right here and now.”

“I could just give you our handler’s number.” Joe said, stunning Nicky.

“Copley’s CIA, well former CIA. I’m sure he can explain far better why we think that Mister Freeman is in severe danger, and why we were trying to get information, so we could find him and bring him safely home to his mother”

“And you had to impersonate federal agents to do so?” Agent Williams repeated the charge. 

“Well, we didn’t think telling her we were independent contractors would get her to talk to us.”

“Mercenaries.”

“Potato, Pohtato.”

“Like Blackwater?”

“Those bastardi? Hell no.”

“Joe…”

“So your name really is Joe?”

Joe shrugged, “sure.”

“And Nick”

“I am called Nicky.”

“Alright, Joe and Nicky. Explain to me how young mister Freeman is in danger. And you’d damn well have a good explanation, or I’m not just arresting you, I’m making sure I put you in a cell so deep, even your ‘handler’ won’t have enough contacts to get you back out within your lifetime, is that understood?

Joe snorted at that. Right, explain just what they were up to. 

The problem was that if they told the full truth, they had no way of knowing that they wouldn’t just be putting not just themselves, but the others as well, in even more danger.

A private firm knowing about them was bad enough, the US government knowing the same… that would be much worse by far.


	10. Chapter 10

10.

  
  
  


Fred stared at the two mercenaries. They looked like an odd couple to find together. The Italian had an odd stare that felt like it could pierce right through you. It was, oddly enough, far scarier than the dark glare coming from his partner. The second man didn’t have an accent that was as easy to recognize as his Italian friend’s. He spoke some accent of Arabic that Fred couldn’t instantly place. But then there were so many Arabic dialects, each with their own words and language that just because you know one version, didn’t mean you understood a word what someone was saying in another. The man wasn’t an Arab though, more likely to be Northern African. Maghrebi maybe?

“We started to worry, when we found out that Mister Freeman was offered a job at Merrick Industries.” The Italian, Nicky, started.

“Why?” They all stared back at Ronnell. Someone who didn’t know her might think she was calm. Fred knew better.

Fred had been so focusing on the imposters that he’d almost forgotten Ronnell was still in the room? It was an oversight he almost cursed herself for, even knowing it was too late now to send her out.

“Because Merrick industries are not to be trusted.” Fred waited for the man to say more. But that was apparently all the Italian had to say on it. 

“Merrick was an asshole”, the man who’d called himself Joe grumbled after a while, breaking the silence.

No one could ever say that Fred Williams didn’t do his research. In fact, as soon as he’d heard the claim that the men had mentioned Merrick Pharmaceuticals as the reason they were investigating Solomon’s disappearance, he’d tried to find anything he could on the company. The fact that the name had rung a bell hadn't helped either.

Six months ago, there had been an attack at the London branch of Merrick inc. Dozens of people had been killed, most of them security staff. Including the head of security, and the CEO of the London branch, Steven Merrick. When the police, and after them Interpol, had investigated the massacre, they found that most of the security footage had been wiped clean. Leaving no one any wiser as to what had happened.

Rumors went on about industrial espionage gone wrong, that maybe it had been a terrorist attack by some group of animal rights activists. Merrick was not exactly well known for how well the company treated its lab animals.

Then the police in France had found dozens of bodies in Goussainville, a small abandoned village near Paris. All of whom had worked for Merrick. Oddly enough, someone had been living in the abandoned rectory, a place owned by some dummy company covered behind at least five layers of shell companies. The television had still been playing when the police checked the place, there were plates in the sink, food left in the fridge and leftovers on the burners. There had been remnants of a fight, blood smeared across one of the chairs. And yet despite all that, most of the bodies had surrounded the church instead.

The bodies they did find had been dead for weeks. They’d died days before the attack on Merrick Inc.

Interpol had really started looking into Merrick employees after that. What they found was that Merrick had bought a bunker in Sudan, hiding it behind some false vaccination program. Once the authorities there let Interpol investigate the place, they found even more bodies. 

Some local men that had gone missing after picking up a job that was supposed to pay pretty well. Killed with headshots and slash wounds. And a bunch more of Merrick’s guards who’d been spread over what could only be called a kill floor. 

There had been a camera, but the footage on that could not be traced. The live feed was only recorded at the end point.

And then there was Nile, corporal Nile Freeman, who’d been kidnapped from an American military base in Afghanistan. The girl had been slashed during an incident dealing with an insurgent. The wound had been bad enough that even her superiors had expected her to die from it. Instead she’d been up and walking the next day. The marine was supposed to be transferred to Germany for testing, to find out just what had happened to her. Instead she’d gone missing. And the next thing heard of her, was that she was dead. There had been no body, even her ashes had come from an outside source. No matter whom Fred had tried to talk about it to, he had been stonewalled from the second he brought it up.

Their imposters were still refusing to answer. They seemed almost harmless, pretending to be jovial, like they couldn’t harm a fly.

“Let me paint you a story, shall I?” Fred started.

“Six months ago, Merrick was up to something in South Sudan. We don’t know what he was doing, just that the place looked heavily guarded, and that someone left a stack of children’s shoes in the middle of the courtyard. No children were found anywhere near the place. I think your team was sent there, probably due to your ex-CIA handler. 

Joe snorted at that. 

“Merrick’s men tried to attack, but they didn’t stand a chance and you killed them instead. You then took something from that place. Something that Merrick thought was important enough to guard and get back afterwards. I’m guessing that it was something your employers wanted, something valuable.”

Fred tried to look at the two men, Joe looked almost amused. Nicky, the Italian, was unreadable.

“So Merrick sent his men after your team. I’m guessing Goussainville was a safe house. After all, who goes looking for a bunch of mercenaries in an abandoned village on the other side of the world from where they were last seen.” Joe flinched at that. “Only somehow they did find you, didn’t they? They found you, and they killed one of yours.”

There wasn’t much known on men called Joe Jones, and Nick Smith, even their aliases were blank slates. But when you went looking for ghost mercenaries, one of whom was a sniper who could kill two men with a single shot, then well… you ended up with a few more answers. A group of mercenaries known as the best of the best. Skilled, capable, anonymous. Every agency wanted them, but even the ones that managed to hire them, only managed to do so once. They were careful to the point of paranoia, and deadlier than a rattlesnake. Merrick had wanted back whatever they stole in South Sudan. And he’d lost dozens of his men trying to regain it. He probably hadn’t even cared about the cost in human lives. Hadn’t even bothered to have the human wreckage cleaned up after him.

“So you decided to go after him instead. To kill him, before he could kill you. Tell me… Joe, how far off am I?”

“Well it does sound like a good story. It’s missing a few points, but it’s a damn fine story.”

“Points like how Corporal Freeman was involved in it?” Fred asked.

The Italian seemed almost sad, his hand moved over his partner’s. It made Fred wonder about the connection between them. 

“Well let’s see.” ‘Joe’ grinned, it sent shivers down Fred’s spine. “We weren’t hired to steal anything.”

“Joe.”

“What? If he’s gonna make up a story, he might as well be set right on some things.”

“Non possiamo raccontare loro tutta la verità.” Fred didn’t understand any Italian, but he could note the curt hint of worry in the voice regardless.

His friend seemed to try and put him at ease.

“Me ne rendo conto, habibi. Ma su alcune cose posso correggerli.” Fred really had to try and memorize the words so he could check them up in google translate later.

Instead he glared at the two of them? “In English, please.”

Joe sat back in his chair, clearly trying to think of how much he was, or wasn’t going to tell them.

“It started six months ago. We met up in Morocco, Booker picked the hotel. The boss had needed some time off, so Nicky and I went off to Nice, Booker… I don’t know where he went off to, he didn’t say.” there was hurt in his voice as he said the name. “Neither did the boss.”

He seemed hesitant. “We weren’t working with our current handler at the time. Booker took care of that stuff. He was better at it than the rest of us. He's the one that got us a job, said the guy told him kids lives depended on it. The boss and Booker talked to the client, while Nicky and I observed from a distance.

“To keep an eye on things.” Fred stated.

Joe looked at Nicky, the two of them shared a glance, a touch.

“To keep an eye on things.” Nicky whispered. “Make sure it wasn’t a trap. It was, but it wasn’t yet ready to be sprung.”

“What do you mean?” Fred shivered under the Italian’s gaze. The more time he spent in the room with the two of them, the more he wanted to flee for his life.

“Six months ago, Merrick Pharmaceuticals started a new project. It involved the head of their scientific department, Doctor Kozak, and the CEO of the London Branch, Steven Merrick. And their head of security, a former navy seal by the name of Keane.” Joe cringed at the last name, fiddling with one of the rings on his hand that looked suspiciously like a wedding ring. The other guy’s hand seemed to be empty, though.

“They lured our unit out to South Sudan under false pretenses. The boss was told that a bunch of insurgents had kidnapped a group of school children between the ages of nine and eleven, murdering the girls’ teachers while doing so. We were given information that the children would be moved out soon, that there was no sign of water or food being brought in, that if we didn’t act fast, the girls would be separated and sold on. The information was false.” Fred tried to imagine a situation like that, hearing about little girls in danger, thinking of his own children..

“We went into the basement of a building, expecting the girls inside. Instead what awaited us was a kill room, with a bunch of Merrick’s men waiting to take us down. We barely got out.” Fred shivered, remembering the pictures of the massacre. If what the Italian said was true, the four of them had been pulled into a trap and yet they’d killed every single one of their would-be killers. It made him wonder why him and his agents were still alive if that’s how these men dealt with traps.

Joe took over.

“We found out that they wanted to capture us.” He continued before Fred could ask more questions, like why? What for? “We don’t really know why. I’m sure he could have gotten volunteers at far lower cost. But either way, we got out of there as fast as we could.”

“How many of Merrick’s people did you kill to get out?” Fred asked, just to be sure.

Joe and Nicky shared a look. “All of them. We didn’t really count the bodies.”

“They caught it on a live camera. We left for France after that. Only on our way there, we found out that Merrick had gotten their eyes on another target. An American marine, corporal Nile Freeman. She’d received a severe injury while in Afghanistan, and managed to survive. Her superiors were going to send her to Germany. Our sources figured she’d never get there, that she might disappear on the road and end up in Merrick’s hands. So we got her first.” Nile… It just made no sense. Nile was smart, capable, competent, but when it came down to it, she was just a girl, a woman now, no different from any other Chicago native. What could Merrick possibly want with her?

“While in our safehouse near Paris, Merrick's troops forced another attack. They shot Booker. Joe and I were taken down, captured, the others barely managed to escape.”

“The massacre at Goussainville?”

“I’m sure the boss took care of them.” Joe said. The boss took care of them? Not them, not the team, just one person.

Nicky closed his eyes. “Joe and I were already chained up and locked in a van by the time Merrick’s men attacked the Boss. When we woke up, we were already on the road to the airport. There were four men in the back of the van with us. We took care of them, but we could not remove the ziplocks on our hands, or the chains on our ankles before we arrived at our destination.

“Like I said, the others barely got away. We… were not so lucky”

“So what did Merrick want with you, that they were willing to sacrifice dozens of lives over it.” The ones in Sudan, the ones in Goussainville, the ones dropped off at that airfield a few miles from Goussainville, and God knows how many more.

“We have no idea.” Joe snorted at that, not even pretending that wasn’t a lie.

“Kozak was crazy. And Merrick was just as bad.” Truth, but not the full truth.

“Aside from that”

“They tortured us.” Nicky picked up from Joe. “Experimented on us.” Joe shivered at his partner’s words, getting closer to him, speaking truth to at least those words.

“You got away.”

“Nile saved us.” Nicky answered, his voice sounding like he was remembering something. “She was shot, multiple times, but she saved all of us. If not for her…” Fred shivered at the desperation in his voice. Joe clearly felt it too, his hand on Nicky’s, supporting him.

“We kept an eye on her family after that. She sacrificed herself for our sake. We owed her. So when we saw that Doctor Kozak had specifically recruited Nile’s brother we got… worried.”

The story felt true, for some parts. It fit the facts, and yet, Fred couldn’t help but feel that there was something he wasn’t told. That there was a lie, somewhere between the facts.

“You’re lying.” He couldn’t keep himself from saying. “Maybe not about all of it, but you’re lying about something.”

Joe was rolling his eyes. And Fred had to admit that maybe they just didn’t trust him enough to tell him the full truth. Maybe they didn’t want to give the full story in front of Nile’s mother, maybe… all of it was even a lie to make them look better. He had no way of knowing.

“Alright. I don’t trust you. I’m pretty sure that at least some of that was bullshit. But whatever else it was, I do think that Merrick can’t be trusted no matter who’s in charge of it. Sol’s a good kid, but multi-billion dollar pharma companies don’t go out of their way to offer internships to second year students, not without good reason. Especially if they don’t get any publicity out of it.” Nicky nodded at that. 

“So the two of you are coming with me to the police station. There you’re going to explain things to me…” Nicky tried to say something, but was stopped. “again. And again, until I get the truth from you assholes. And then once I do, I’ll see if I can get warrants to go into Merrick’s and hopefully find out nothing is wrong there, and that Sol will just come home safely with no harm done to him. but if anything you did is the reason that a twenty year old kid is now in danger…” He didn’t continue his sentence, but his meaning was more than clear. 

“And what if we don’t come with you?” Nicky said it as dry if he was talking about not wanting to come in for paperwork on a traffic fine. “What if we decide to leave?”

Fred looked back at Ronnell who was sitting in her kitchen staring at them. At the two men in front of him. He remembered dozens of bodies, in several different locations. He remembered bloodstains, and marks of gunfire. And the fact that they still hadn’t disarmed either of the two. And he wondered, if these guys didn’t want to come, how could they ever get them to do so? Preferably without one of his oldest friends ending up hurt because of him.


	11. Chapter 11

11.

  
  


Nile sat next to Booker in the back of the car, Quynh was sitting in the seat in front of them, staring at Andy who was waiting in the driver’s seat. It had seemed a bit funny at first, Nicky getting them a typical soccer mom car when they needed something to drive. It’s just… five or six adults in a regular car did not mean a comfortable drive for anyone but the ones lucky enough to sit in the front seats. The minivan might not be ‘cool’, but it was comfy and let them continue working as Andy sped through traffic to get them wherever they had to be.

Booker’s hands were still trembling, even if the worst was past, they still felt they had to keep an eye on him. It was odd, Andy had gone through some of the same, yet even though she was mortal now, her symptoms had never gotten as bad as Bookers.

Andy claimed it was because she’d never drank as much as Booker. It made Nile fear for Booker’s body, if he drank more than the pure vodka Nile had seen Andy herself swallow in one go.

“So how have you been?”

Booker stared at her.

“You know, aside from Quynh deciding to play tough parent.”

Booker snorted, his eyes on the house in front of them.

“Mostly trying to lose myself. I know it was my fault, that I deserved it all, and worse. But … I hadn’t been truly alone, since the day Andy picked me up after Jean Pierre’s funeral. Even when we were separated, the others… they were always only a phone call away. I thought I was lonely, but I didn’t realize what being alone meant, until …” 

Nile nodded, she understood. She knew how it had felt when the members of her unit had turned on her. When they’d stared at her in fear, or worse, refusing to even look at her. The way they’d packed her bag, as if hurrying her on to get away from the rest of them. She hadn’t been one of them from the moment she died, and they could feel it, before she did.

“And then one day I got home, and Quynh was there. It felt almost comforting, being able to refuse to answer her where the others were. At least I wasn’t alone anymore.”

“Book."

“I don’t blame you, Andy. Or Nicky, or Joe, or Nile. I just blame myself.”

“Well that’s something at least.”

“Andy!”

Nile was about to try and argue with the both of them, when she noticed movement coming from the house. The door opened and two men came out, Nicky and Joe following right behind them. Both of their brothers had their hands tied behind their backs. Two more men took up right after them. All four men were dressed in suits. They didn’t look like Merrick’s people. But that might be the US branch compared to the one in London.

“Wait.” 

Both Booker and Nile stared at Andy. Quynh waited for Andy to continue.

“Joe and Nicky aren’t fighting. If those were Merrick’s people…”

“Then those men would be dead already.”

“Feds.” 

“Feds?” Quynh looked confused.

“Federal agents, working for the authorities. The boys might hesitate to harm them, especially with Nile’s mother in the room with them.”

Two more feds left the house, one of them was on his phone. Nicky and Joe were led into the back of one of the cars. 

“They are no longer in a room with Mrs. Freeman.”

“Let’s see where they’re taking them first.”

The guy on the phone got in the car with Nicky and Joe. Moving in the front seat. 

The other car followed right behind the car with Nicky and Joe in it

Too many for any of them to fight. Andy slid into traffic after them, close enough to keep track of them, far enough not to be noticed. 

****   
  


  
  


Nicky figured the car was driving about 30 miles an hour. If they really had to, he could strangle the driver, while Joe took out the agent sitting next to him. After that it would be a matter of kicking out the doors, and getting out before the car made a collision. Of course that would risk causing a traffic accident. And there were too many cars surrounding them to fully avoid the risk. 

He sat back in the chair, his hands still tied in front of him. The cuffs the cops used weren’t comfortable, but as far as stopping him from doing anything was concerned, they weren’t really an issue. He’d had way worse.

Joe was talking about the weather, and how glad he was that it was sunny. Nothing worse than to be taken to the police station in the middle of a downpour. You tended to get so drenched when you were taken out of the car, and then they never let you properly dry up before dragging you in for interrogation. 

Joe always knew what to say to make him feel better. It was odd. He saw some couples complain about spending a week with one another, how it got boring. Yet, when he looked at Joe, he didn’t think he’d ever get bored just listening to his voice. Maybe he just got lucky? He couldn’t say.

Andy had been following them since they left, so at least she knew where they were heading. There’d been a renewed light in her eyes ever since she first saw Quynh standing next to Booker. To have her back, no matter what, it filled a hole that he’d almost given up hope on seeing fixed. 

That was when he spotted a bunch of cars heading their way. Merrick wasn’t even being inconspicuous this time. Which was probably what shocked him, enough not to pin himself in place and be ready for it.

Two of the vans positioned themselves between the two cars, forcing theirs to slow down, before hitting them on the side, forcing them in place. Nicky lost track of the other NCIS car. He tried to pull out of the cuffs, wondering if he should break his thumb to get rid of them.

Agent Williams pointed at the man next to him, telling him to get ready, before pulling out his own gun. “Stay down” the agent yelled at them.

Nicky looked at Joe, their foreheads met for a second, already agreeing on how they were going to fight whoever came after them. 

“I mean it. I’m sure you can handle yourself. But you’re in police custody now. That means you’re under police protection.”

Joe rolled his eyes. “I don’t think they care about that.”

Eight men jumped out of the van. They clearly weren’t taking the situation for granted. The guards were dressed up in modern armor. Nicky wished he was wearing his own Kevlar. They might heal, but getting shot still hurt. 

The agent got ready to open the window and shoot at whoever came near them, expecting the driver to get them out of the way. The guy seemed nervous, yammering on about how this wasn’t supposed to happen.

Nicky was starting to have a guess at what had been supposed to happen. For them to be taken to the station, where someone would ‘arrange’ their transfer, and then slowly make them disappear in Merrick’s hands. Except that someone had gotten impatient. 

Williams was trying to call someone, first on the radio, and then on his phone but it was clear that Merricks people were using jammers.

Nicky broke his thumbs and pulled his hands out of the cuffs. Williams stared at him in shock, as Nicky could already feel his fingers resettle. Joe was out of his cuffs already. They shared a look before getting ready to kick out the doors if they had to.

That’s when Nicky realized it, Merrick’s people weren’t planning to keep anyone alive. They’d kill everyone in the car, and then take Joe and him when they were dead. 

With how close Andy and the others were, if that happened, they could hold off these azzos till Andy got there. But if they did, innocent people were sure to die.

No matter what, he couldn’t let that happen. Williams might have been an annoyance, but he wasn’t a bad guy and he didn’t deserve to die over this. And, from the looks of it, whatever part the driver had had in the attack, he hadn’t been aware of the real plan.

“You have to let them take us,” Nicky whispered, shivering as he said so, knowing full well where they’d be heading once captured. And even with the others coming after them, the very idea of being in that woman’s hands ever again, worse, putting Joe in her hands... He looked at Joe, their eyes meeting in agreement. “If you don’t, they’ll kill you, and take us anyway.”

“You’re insane!” Williams tried to shut him down.

“Look at them,” Joe screamed. “they’re attacking us in broad daylight. There’s tons of witnesses surrounding us, and they’re not even hesitating to attack us.”

“I don’t fucking care.” Nicky stared at Williams. “I am not letting a bunch of assholes grab anyone I have in my custody.” 

“You do understand, we’re already half escaped.”

Williams glared at him in return. Nicky kind of respected him for that. Either way, it didn’t matter. He wondered how he could knock the guy out without hurting him. They were surrounded. 

He kicked at the door. It was locked so it didn’t give. 

“You have to let us out.” 

Williams was still refusing. But then the driver clicked a button and the door unlocked, Nicky quickly pushed it open before Williams could close it again. There were over five guns aimed at him. The others were still aimed at the rest of the car.

“Hold your fire. We’re coming out,” he said. “You don’t have to kill anyone.” At least the men were listening. Nicky raised his hands above his head, letting them know he wasn’t armed. Joe did the same as he came out. They were soon surrounded by most of Merrick’s hired men, guns aimed at their heads from all sides. 

When the needle went in his neck, he almost clung to the man holding him up, he stared at Joe one last time as his consciousness faded away.

“Kill the cops anyway.” He heard one of them say. By then it was too late to fight back.


	12. Chapter 12

12.

Fred grabbed his gun, ready to fight the bastards that had attacked them, too many guns aimed at him, to get them to stop as they grabbed his prisoners, forcing some kind of sedative into their necks before throwing them into the first van. Six of the men jumped into the van with them.. 

“Kill the cops anyway, we can’t leave any witnesses,” one of the remaining attackers said, just as the van doors closed, and it sped off with his prisoners.

Fred grit his teeth, he was not about to lay down and die, just as Gunderson started begging for his life, saying he was the one that told him about the men asking questions, that there was no reason to kill him, that he was on their side. It didn’t look like it was helping him one bit.

If they got out of this alive, Fred would make sure he paid for it.

He knew he had to make his bullets count, since he didn’t have many of them. He shot one of them in the face, before trying to aim and shoot at a second one. A third was on him and he got hit twice in the shoulder, once in the leg. But he knew he had to survive. Not just for his sake, but for that of Nicky and Joe. He remembered Nicky’s words, how Merrick had had them tortured the last time. Whatever else of what he’d said had been a lie, that bit, that had had the feel of truth.

It tore into him. Whatever those guys might be up to, they’d allowed themselves to be captured to try and save his life. To try and save innocent lives. He owed it to them to get them out, just like he owed it to Ronnell to get Sol out. And if he died here and now, no one else would know what had happened to them. They might even blame the two men for his death, while doing who knows what to them.

Just as he was about to try and duck out of cover and fire another shot, one of his attackers went down. An arrow was sticking through his forehead. The remaining two men stared at the people coming their way. Three women and a man. The one leading the charge was a tall white woman, with short dark hair, dressed butch, with jeans, a leather vest over a tank top, and a look in her eyes that made cold shivers go down his back. The second woman was Asian, Vietnamese, probably. She was dressed as if more ready for a night out than a battle, yet she held a compound bow aimed at their attackers with a level of skill that made it clear this wasn’t a game. The white man with them looked haggard, but jumped into battle just as readily, taking out the third attacker before the guy could even turn around. That left the last member of the group. Her face was hidden, as she kept her head down in her hoodie, looking away from him as she overlooked the battle. She seemed almost familiar.

Fred stared at her, willing her to look his way. When she did, he almost let the pain grab hold of him, and stumbled to his knees.

This had to be some kind of hallucination. It had to be.

“Nile?”

“Uncle Fred?!” she was at his side a second later, he shivered, when she touched him, he expected her to evaporate like the dream she had to be. Instead she was real.

“They took them, Nicky and Joe. I couldn’t….”

“Fuck. I was hoping they were in the other car.” The white woman grunted out. She took in the sight of the battle, before he turned to Gunderson who was backing away from her in wide-eyed fear.

Williams glared at the guy.

“Who were they working for,” he growled at the man.

The woman stared at him, a bit confused when she realized he wasn’t aiming his anger at her.

“He was just telling our attackers how he was on their side, that he’d given them the information that got them here.”

“Did he now?”

She picked Gunderson up by the chin, ignoring that he was half a head taller than her, forcing him up.

“Well then, who paid you? And where are they taking Nicky and Joe?”

  
  
  


****   
  


  
  


Solomon sat up when he saw the guards dragging in two men. He gasped as he recognized one of them from the video Dr Kozak had shown him what had to be only a few days ago. 

The two men were thrown into separate cells. He could hear them grunt as they started to sit up almost right after. 

“Solomon Freeman, I’m assuming,” the second guy said. Sol looked at the guy, slightly darker skinned with curly hair and a well cared for beard.

He sat up and touched the glass door before Sol could warn him, and got shocked in return.

“Fuck.”

“Well at least we’re not strapped to a table this time,” his friend said. Solomon flinched at the mention of the table, the one he’d spent far too many hours on in the past few days.

“Solomon?”

“How do you know my name?”

“We were looking for you. When we heard that Doctor Kozak had been the one to recruit you for that Merrick internship, we got worried. When we saw you went missing, we came to find you.”

“Why?” Why would they care? He wasn’t like them, but did they know that?

“Because no one deserves to be in Kozak’s hands. “

Solomon shivered. “Are you with my sister?”

“We knew Nile, si.”

“I already know she’s still alive. Kozak told me.”

The stranger closed his eyes and lowered his head at that.

“Solomon.”

“She is, isn’t she? “

The man hesitated, as if unsure whether he should tell the truth or not. If they weren’t locked in their cells, Sol would have wanted to shake them out of that bit of idiocy.

“Don’t lie to me.”

“Solomon.”

“Don’t, okay? I’ve spent the past few days with a mad woman pinning me with needles, cutting bits out of me, bleeding me. I’ve had a monster touch me in places, she did things.”

“I’m sorry. That shouldn’t have happened to you.”

“Yeah, well. I guess you guys know what she’s capable of.”

The two men didn’t answer, both of them sat down on the floor next to the wall, as if trying to get close to the other, even with the wall between them separating them from one another.

“My name is Nicolò di Genova. You can call me Nicky.” Solomon shivered at the way he said the name, as if he was giving out a secret that shouldn’t be told.

“Yusuf ibn Ibrahim ibn Mohammed al Kaysani, named Al Tayib. Joe”

“Thanks.”

Nicolò, Nicky, looked almost small in the whiteness of the cell, while Yusuf, Joe, looked as if he was large enough to take up the entire room. Yet they weren’t too different in actual size. It was the way they moved. One quiet, every move seemingly predetermined, as if he didn’t want to take up any more space than he had to, while Yusuf, Joe, looked more open, more vibrant, ready to yell and laugh, though not in this place. Dragging all eyes at him, no matter what he did or said.

Solomon didn’t know what it was about them, they seemed almost easy to ignore. Mutant superheroes, or whatever the hell they were should be larger than life. But that wasn’t these two. No, instead they just seemed comfortable, like they could fit in anywhere. Maybe that was even how they managed to keep themselves out of the public eye. For them, that was probably for the best.

“So how is Nile?”

There was a moment of silence.

“Coping. Missing you and your Mom. She keeps visiting your facebook page, and that telegram thing.“

“I think it’s called Instantgram, Nicolò.” 

“Yes, the ‘gram’ thing. Copley had to make her a few safe new facebook identities and some other of those sites, to keep anyone from noticing she was doing so.” The way Nicky said facebook, well it wasn’t just the Italian accent that made it sound weird. It kinda reminded Sol of how his Gramps would say it.

Sol tried to imagine Nile checking his page, wondering which of his far too many ‘friends’ was Nile. She’d always told him to be a bit more careful with accepting facebook friend requests. But he always needed more people for games, and the number of people liking his posts, whether they knew him or not, had always been a bit flattering. 

Now he wished he’d kept better track of new friends, just so he could find her.

“Who’s Copley?”

“A -” Joe started.

“He’s a friend. He’s the one who arranged for Nile to be declared dead in action.”

“That is not something to make him look good,” Sol mumbled. Neither of the two called him out on it.

“He covers our tracks now, helps us get the kind of jobs in which we can do the most good.”

“Nile did always want to help people,” Solomon whispered.

“She has a kind heart, your sister.”

“So she’s still with you guys? What are you guys anyway? The Doctor, Kozak, showed me a video of you healing.”

Nicky seemed to hesitate for a moment.

“The only word we have for it is immortal. Though it is not quite accurate.”

“Immortal?” So he was right on Nile not aging.

“We live, and heal, until it is our time. When it’s our time, we become mortal once more.”

“And then you die?”

“Then we live as a mortal, and die as one.” There was an agelessness in Nicky’s tone, the way he spoke, so direct, speaking the deepest possible meaning, in a way that was almost casual. It was sort of horrifying the way he threw truth bombs like that.

“Fuck.”

“So… do you get like a warning, when it’s about to end? Like some kind of what the hell, alarm or something.”

“No.”

And Nile had that; a power that could make her careless, make her think she would heal anyway. Till one day it just stopped working, and she could get killed because her powers gave her the illusion that she’d be safe. 

“That seems kind of cruel.” The words came out before he could stop them.

“It keeps us human.” Joe said with a smile. “To know that any battle could be the last, that every fight could be the end. It connects us to the world. It’s hard enough knowing that sooner or later anyone you meet will end up dying. At least we know that, one day, we can rest with them. Just… not too soon.”

“Most people would be more scared of dying.”

Nicky was just about to answer that when the door to the hall with the cellblock opened and two people entered, armed guards in their wake.

The sight of Doctor Kozak made Sol want to pull away. Not that there was far to go in his cell. Nicky and Joe, both got up as well, ready to fight back.

“So these are the two you had before, is that right, Doctor?” The old man’s voice hitched at certain points as he gasped for air. 

“Yes, mister Merrick.”

“They don’t look like much.” It was like the man didn’t even notice Joe’s glare at him. Nicky seemed almost sad. As if wondering how the man had wasted so much of his life.

Doctor Kozak didn’t seem ready to fight the man, Which was almost the scariest part of it all. The woman rarely if ever seemed to hold back at anything else.

“Start with the Arab. The board will want to see some evidence if we want to convince them that this is worth spending their money on.” He turned around and headed back out without another word.

“You leave him alone.” Sol screamed, just as Nicky seemed ready to say something as well. But no one was listening to him as the door to Joe’s cell was opened, guns aimed at him. Joe was ready to jump out at them, and grab for one of their guns, but he got shot in the gut before he could do so.

Then, while he was down from that, one of the guards stabbed him with a paralytic, sedating him long enough for them to drag him off. 

Nicky was pouncing the door of his cell, not caring about the electrical charge on it.

Kozak took one last look at Nicky.

“He’ll be fine.” She said. Almost as if to soothe her own conscience. “This really is the best use of your talents. You’ll see that one day.”

Then she left, and Nicky was left broken in his cell. One word on his lips, “Yusuf.”


	13. Chapter 13




  
  
  


They were at the hospital, waiting to be sure the fed was alright. The other agents were keeping an eye on them. Especially on Andy and Quynh, while Booker and Nile were sitting on the side. Sharing a grin as the two ancients shared mutual glares at the so called authorities.

Supposedly they were under arrest. But since no one had had the guts to come close enough to disarm any of them, that was not nearly as impressive as it might sound. Especially since the feds hadn’t even dared refuse them when they said they’d only talk to agent Williams, and that they wanted to follow him to the hospital to make sure he was fine.

Gunderson, Merrick’s plant, had still been blabbering on by the time the other feds got there, making it clear he was the one responsible for the attack. Especially when Williams started telling the other agents that Andy and the others were the only reason he was still alive.

“I’m sorry, Nile.”

Nile looked at Booker. 

“I was supposed to come help, and instead I’ve been… I’ve just made it harder for everyone.”

“How have you made it harder?”

She knew he was talking about the alcohol withdrawal. The distraction he’d caused in Joe and Nicky having to deal with him. The fact that he’d been too ill to properly research anything. It’s just… none of that was his fault. 

“Book. You came. You know that matters, right? To me, to Andy, to Nicky and Joe. You could have sat this out. You’re dealing with loads of crap. You had every excuse to refuse to help. But when the team asked for it, you showed up. That’s all they wanted from you.”

“I still screwed up.”

“So? We all screwed up. I still have to find a way to explain to Sol why I’m not dead.”

“Not just to Sol.” Nile turned around, staring at her mother who stood there with her arms crossed, and a glare on her face that made Nile want to slink away in a hole somewhere and disappear forever.

“Mom, I…”

“Nile Nyota Freeman, I should take you over my lap and give you a good beating like you deserve for making me think you were dead for over half a year. “

Nile shrunk away. Book was getting up. Partly to get between Nile and her Mom, and partly to shrink away from the outrage in her voice.

“So unless you have a damn fine excuse...”

“She does,” Booker said.

“And who the hell are you?”

“Booker. I’m… My name’s Sebastien Le Livre. I’m… a friend of Nile’s.”

Booker and Mom faced off. Nile wanted to push the idiot out of the way. Before Mom really let him have it. But then Booker had never really had possession of the brain cell in the family.

“Explain.”

“I’m the one who told Nile she shouldn’t go back home.”

For a moment Nile felt relief as her mother’s attention backed away from her and moved over to Book. Just for a moment before her sense of fairness made her get up next to Book and try to interfere, to defend Book.

Neither of them let her though.

Mom didn’t even say a word, it was the Mom glare that did most of the work and had Book trembling. As if he wasn’t sick already, far sicker than an immortal should be. Which made her wonder if they should check if he was still healing. Maybe that was something they should always check after what happened to Andy.

“We can’t… explain things here.” Nile tried. 

But there was no moving the two of them. 

“I was born in France in the year 1770. I was forced to join Napoleon’s Grand Arméé. It was either that, or go to prison for forgery.”

Seriously? The others hadn’t mentioned that bit.

“The war… Napoleon sent us to Russia, in Winter. It wasn’t just the cold, it was starvation, the kind that had you eat your belt and look at your boots, if you didn’t need them to keep your toes from freezing off. I had a wife and kids, and I desperately wanted to go back home to them. The army didn’t deal well with soldiers trying to take off without permission. I was hung for desertion.”

“That’s impossible.” Nile was almost surprised it took her Mom as long as it did to try and say something. “And what does it even have to do with Nile?”

“I’m not finished, Mrs. Freeman.”

“Continue then.”

“I hung in a noose for three days. Three days of waiting for the army to move on, pretending to be dead in between deaths. Freezing, starving, and suffocating, over and over again.”

Three days versus Quynh’s five centuries, and yet…

“By the time they left, and I got to pull my way out, I thought I’d ended up in hell. It was like a nightmare. I didn’t know what had happened, or why. Just that I kept dying, but death wouldn’t keep me. And then I met the others. Andrea, Joseph, Nicholas. They… they welcomed me, tried to be there for me, to be my family. But all I wanted to do was go back home. Just like Nile did.”

Mom sat down on the chairs on the other side of the hallway. Nile knelt down next to her, trying to memorize her mother’s face in a way she should have done before, but never did. Always thinking there would be another day. That she’d just see her again, after school, after work, after her tour. And then she’d died, and if not for Sol going missing, she’d have never seen her again.

“My wife… She welcomed me with open arms. She didn’t ask questions at first. My boys, Antoine, Jean Claude, they were so happy I came back home. Antoine was a bit hesitant at first, scared I’d soon be leaving again, that the police might come after me, like they did last time when I got arrested.” Booker looked downcast, broken. “And for a few years, it was good. Amélie and I, she was everything to me. She was beautiful, like a rose in bloom. We had a third son, Jean Pierre. I got a job, working as a clerk, and I thought, This is it. This is what happiness is supposed to be.”

“So what happened?”

“They aged. They grew older. But I didn’t. Andrea came to talk to me, every once and a while. Her, Nicholas and Joseph. They’d come by every few months, then every few years, to see how I was doing. And it started showing. I tried to cover my hair at first, to not stand out next to Amélie. But within a few years, even that didn’t help anymore." Nile wanted to hug him, she wasn't sure if it would be welcome.  


Mom stared at him with tears in her eyes. 

“People started wondering if I was her younger brother at first, then her son… And my boys, they stared at me in suspicion." Mom nodded, silently telling him to continue.  


“I told them the truth of course. That I’d died, how I healed, how I’d come back. And they begged me to share the secret with them. But I couldn’t. I didn’t even know the secret. Even Andrea didn’t know, and she’s been around for almost all of human history.

“Antoine… he was the first to get married, to move out of the house. He threatened me, demanded me to stay as far away from him and his children as I possibly could. That he never wanted to see me again. That I was a monster. Jean Claude followed soon after.

“Amélie… I sometimes found her looking at herself in a mirror, wondering why I stuck with her. As if my agelessness made her feel her own age creep up even more. By the time she died, she wouldn’t even let me sleep in the same bed anymore.” 

Nile wanted to wrap Booker up. She’d heard the story before. But it hurt more now that she’d felt what it was like to be away from Mom and Sol. 

“By the time Jean Pierre was dying, he was cursing my name. Telling me my love wasn’t real. That if I ever truly loved him, I’d give him what I had. As if I wouldn’t have done so in a heartbeat if it could have saved him from the cancer.”

“No parent ever wants to bury their children.” Mom whispered.

“There’s a name for a child without a parent, for a man or woman who loses their spouse, but there’s no word for parents who lose their children.”

“And yet, you made me think my daughter was dead.”

“I was trying to protect Nile. I told her that if she went back, it might taint her memory of you forever. That it could break her. I can’t apologize for that.”

“You’re a fool. Mister Le Livre. An understandable one, but a fool nonetheless.” Booker flinched back. “Did it ever enter your mind that your wife was happy to have you at her side, that she was ashamed of her own weakness rather than yours?”

“I…”

“If my Victor had come back from the war, if he’d been there to see his children grow up, it would have been the greatest gift God could ever give me. It might hurt to know I couldn’t be there for him, that I’d have to leave him one day. But I would never regret even one more second I could have spent with him. I can’t imagine your wife thinking differently. And if she did, then curse her.”

“Don’t…”

“Don’t talk about your wife like that? Good, your memory of her is still there, your good memories of her are still there. You didn’t lose those. It’s just your own pain that pushed itself into places it shouldn’t have. I don’t know what mental health looked like in the 18th century, but I’m damn sure not going to let you screw up my daughter’s life just because nobody told you to get over yourself. Because nobody put your sons in their place and told them they should have been grateful to still have a daddy instead of a stone or plaque to visit.” Nile couldn’t help but remember their trips to the graveyard, putting flowers on her daddy’s tombstone. She couldn’t help but think how her Momma had to have felt when they handed her the flag after Nile was supposedly buried.

“I’m sorry, Momma.” Nile whispered. “I just…”

“When did you die, baby?”

“Afghanistan. We were tracking down a militant. He cut my throat. They told me, nobody expected me to get back up from that. They took my dog tags, got them ready to send them to you. And then… I got back up. I healed.”

“And then Merrick kidnapped you?” Nile stared at uncle Fred who was standing in the hall. No idea how much he’d heard of what Book had been saying. 

Nile didn’t want to answer, she’d lied enough to her mother as it were.

“After Merrick, I went underground with the others. Andy, Nicky and Joe. We… “

“I was exiled.” Booker said. “After I betrayed the others, they told me they wouldn’t see me for… a period of time. “

“And that period is over now.”

“Well… not quite. But when Nile noticed Sol went missing, Andy called me back in to help.”

“And you did?” Mom asked him. 

“Of course.”

“We’re not done talking about this, Nile.”

“I know, Momma.”

“But let's work to get your friends back. Fred told me what they did for him. And if they helped you too?”

“They did. They were there for me, Mom. They’re… they’re family.”

“Then let’s get them back. Them and Sol.”

  
  


******

  
  


Nicky was curled up on the cot, desperate not to think of what they had to be doing to Joe. He wasn’t sure which was worse. Last time, as he had to lie there and watch as they cut into Joe, or not even being there as they did so, not even being able to look at him, to comfort him as he came back. 

Solomon was singing a song to fend off the silence, it reminded Nicky of one of the songs Nile had on her playlist. He wondered if her brother had learned it from her, or the other way around.

“So the two of you, are you, you know?”

Sol’s question broke through the fog for a moment and Nicky sat up.

“Yusuf, he’s… the love of my life.”

“Can’t be easy, with the both of you being immortal and all that.”

“It’s the one thing in my life that has always made sense.” Nicky said, meaning every word.

“Wow. What did your parents think about it?”

“I was never able to introduce Yusuf to my parents.”

“That sucks.”

Nicky dozed back in memories, pulling his legs close as he thought back. 

“They always told me that people like Yusuf, Muslims, were infidel, soulless. My mother was sad when she realized I was riddled in sin, that I was cursed so I did not hold the interest in women I should have had. But she was happy when I decided to join the church. That I fought the urge to sin, and tried to cleanse myself of wrong doings. When I told my father I wanted to go to the holy land and free it from the pagans instead, he took a loan to buy me a horse, armor and a sword, so I could bring pride to our family name, and save my soul”

“I’m guessing they would have really hated it if you ever brought your Muslim boyfriend back home with you for family dinner, wouldn’t they?”

Nicky snorted at the word ‘Boyfriend’, remembering how Joe had gone off the last time someone had used that word to sneer at them.

“I’m not sure which part they would have found worse.”

The door opened, and Nicky almost expected them to drag Joe back in. Sitting here, he had no real idea how long they’d been trapped in here since Kozak had taken his husband.

Instead it was just two guards carrying a cart with two plates on it. 

One of them was put on the lid on the side of Nicky’s cell. A green light went on, after they pushed in the plate and closed it on their side.

Nicky looked at Solomon who nodded back and Nicky went up to it, opening it. 

Rice, overcooked carrots and chicken. There weren’t any utensils, so he picked some up with his fingers. It was bland, almost tasteless. It wasn’t the worst he’d ever eaten. But that wasn’t saying much.

Solomon had already started on his own meal, which seemed to be the same thing.

“Merrick needs better cooks.” The boy muttered. “Even the meals at my old highschool were better than this crap.”

“I cannot speak of American highschools.”

“Be glad you missed out on that. They might have fed those of us who couldn’t afford school meals, but they damn well made sure you knew whose parents were paying for their meals and which ones weren’t.”

It was easier talking to Solomon, complaining about something as inconsequential as a bland meal. Better that than to think of the pain Joe had to be going through as they sat there, doing nothing to save him.

“I want out of here, but… is it bad that I want Nile to stay as far away as possible?”

“Nobody wants their loved ones at risk. Even when they are immortal.”


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning for gore at the end of this chapter, Kozak has no ethics where her 'research' is concerned.

14.

Fred tried not to look at the Frenchman. He tried not to think of the conversation he’d overheard, and how the guy had literally claimed to be two hundred and fifty years old. Or that the woman who’d saved his life was said to be ‘as old as human history’. Even if that was an exaggeration, she’d still been around for years by the time Le Livre was only newly immortal.

He tried to think of Merrick going after these people, them surviving a killroom and killing everyone in it. And wondered the lengths a pharmaceutical company might go to in order to get their hands on people able to live forever. Measures that apparently involved killing NCIS agents, if they got in the way.

He stared at Nile, thinking of her file, of how she’d been taken off a military base mere minutes before she was supposed to take off to a military hospital in Germany for tests. How would his own government have dealt with a young marine with that kind of abilities? Would they have treated her any better?

He’d always believed in the law. He’d believed in his country. But he’d been a marine before he joined NCIS, and he’d been a black man all his life. The notion of the US being fair to all had never been real for all Americans. Why would it be any fairer to a young black woman who couldn’t die? The others… what might happen to them was bad, and he’d take it to his superiors as far as he could push it. But Nile… She was Ronnie and Victor’s girl. The notion of seeing her treated as a test subject by anyone was more horrifying than anything he could ever imagine. And if he had to go against his oath, against the law, against anything to protect her, then he damn well would.

“I called my boss. He’s arranging a warrant to go after Merrick.”

“And you believe that will actually go through?” The white woman asked.

Williams grinned. 

“Before? No way. Merrick has too much money for that. But he screwed up massively. He had his men attack NCIS agents. He went up against the government, and I don’t care how much money he’s got. There’s no way the brass is gonna let him get away with that.”

“We’ll see.” There was a sense of ‘been there done that’ in her voice. A sense of loss that felt out of sorts with her apparent age.

“Andromache.” The Viet woman drew attention to herself as she entered the room. Her hair was freshly cleaned and she was wearing a new outfit. One without any blood on it. He tried not to think of how she’d looked when she’d gotten Gunderson to confess.

“Quynh.” The two women moved towards one another. They didn’t touch, Andy just stared at the other in awe, her hand at her side, flinching for a second as if she was still scared to reach out. Fred had no idea what was going on between them. Hearing Le Livre’s story, he was scared to even ask.

He just realized that Andy was ‘the boss’ that the other two men had been talking about. Whatever he had expected, this bit of vulnerability wasn’t it. There was something fragile between the two of them. And the others, including Nile, seemed almost hesitant to come between them.

“So when do you get that warrant?”

Fred was just about to say that he was still waiting for it, when he got a message. “Now apparently.”

He checked the mail. “The police are issuing the warrant to search the premises at Merrick’s home and offices. I’m heading there now.”

“We’re coming with you.”

“Look, I’m going to have enough trouble keeping you people from getting arrested.”

“For what?”

“What?” 

“What would they arrest us for? Nicky and Joe were the only ones impersonating officers, right?”

“As if you didn’t know what they were doing.” Fred muttered.

“Well duh, but they don’t have any evidence of that.”

“Uncle Fred, don’t even try to stop Andy. It’s a waste of time,” Nile said it with a chuckle in her voice that made him think she was speaking from experience. Repeated experience at that. “They didn’t just take Sol, they took two members of the team. You can either let us come along, and let us help you. Or watch as we go anyway.”

Fred stared as the woman pulled an ax out of a guitar case, her fingers moving over the metal, checking it for nicks before closing the case again. Nile, sweet little Nile who used to give him puppy eyes just to get an extra scoop of ice cream, was checking her gun while the Frenchman put his own back in his pants. Like an idiot, an immortal one, but still an idiot.

“Oh fuck.” These fools really would come whether he wanted them or not. He just gave up, and let them follow.

Ronnie just shook her head, grabbing her own bag, “Ronnell.”

“I’m going to wait at home, but I expect to see you back there after.”

Fred knew that wasn’t just aimed at him. Nile at least still seemed to be smart enough to be scared of what that would mean.

Andy, or ‘the boss’ drove the car. He’d be terrified, thinking of her killing those men at the church, if he wasn’t holding on to the car because of her driving. When they finally arrived at Merrick’s building, the place was already crawling with police officers.

Fred quickly took charge, nobody even asked for the other’s badges, since everyone just assumed they had to be NCIS because they were with him.

He wasn’t going to tell anyone if no one even bothered to stop them over it.

One of Merrick’s security guards came up to them, asking what was going on. But stopped as soon as they showed their warrant. Letting them in. People froze up at seeing the cops, jumped away from their work stations. Most of them seemed utterly unaware that something had been going on.

It wasn’t until they got to the place that Sol was supposed to have been assigned to that they got some answers. More specifically from his direct boss, John Garnett.

“I don’t know, one moment I’m taking the kid to Dr Kozak’s office, the next thing I know, she tells me he left without badging out. I left a note about it with HR. He didn’t seem like the kind of kid who’d flake out for no reason.” 

“And you didn’t tell the police this?”

“I called them, asked them if they’d heard anything. They told me to stop wasting their time. Is the kid ok?”

“He’s a missing person.”

“Fuck.” The guy seemed genuinely worried, and instantly showed them what Solomon had been working on, along with the lab he’d been told to drop the kid off at.

It didn’t take them long to get a badge to open Kozak’s lab. It was empty. Nobody had been there in days.

There was a video paused on the monitor. Showing a man tied to a table, his face cringing in pain as someone cut into him. Fred shivered as he recognized the man’s face. 

Nicky had called it torture. Fred had never thought he was understating what had been done to him.

The man died on the table, if he hadn’t been immortal, he’d have stayed dead.

And now he was back in Kozak’s hands. And they had no idea where she was.

  
  


*****   
  


  
  
  


Carlton could feel his heart beating in his chest, anger driving him on. How dare the cops even bother him. He was working on his legacy, defeating death, for all of humanity, and to spite his children. And yet, instead of thanking him, they were treating him like a common criminal.

His guards were patrolling the building as he saw them on the cameras. The black bitch that had stolen his property when Steven had captured them last time. And the rest of them. The Frenchman, and the Amazon. The one that was useless to him now. 

Well at least the boy had served some purpose in smoking them out. Now all they had to do was get their hands on them. Then, once they had them, once they could prove just what they had, the government would be paying them for unlocking those monster gene codes. The military use for their healing alone would make it worth it. 

“Tell Kozak she can start on the Italian. Once we have our… proof, they’ll be groveling at our feet, pleading for forgiveness for getting in our way.”

His assistant picked up the phone, giving the doctor the news.

He took a look at the feed from the lab. The Arab lay on the table, his chest kept open with clamps as the doctor had been testing to see how long it would take the man to regrow his internal organs.

The guy’s eyes were wide open, and he’d be struggling if she hadn’t paralyzed him before she started the first cut. His mouth was wide open in a scream. He’d put the sound off soon after it started for that reason alone. 

Alive, awake through all that. 

He was rich, he owned one of the highest rated companies in the world. And yet, with every creak of his bones, every rattle of his teeth, he felt jealousy creep up on him in a way he’d never imagined possible.

Before this was over, they’d regret ever making him feel that way.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> more trigger warnings for depiction of torture and dehumanisation of Nicky and Joe by Kozak.

15.

  
  


Booker stared at the lab, letting the image of Nicky in pain force its way into his head.

He’d done that. Nicky and Joe had suffered like that because of him. Because of his stupidity. And if they were suffering now, it was also because of him. Because he’d given, first Copley and through him Merrick, the information they’d used to come after them.

“Why do that? What do they hope to attain with this?” Quynh asked, reminding them how little she knew of modern life. Considering how quickly she’d adapted to the new world, it was easy to forget that she’d gone from the middle ages to the present, with only a few weeks time to get used to being free.

But even the most adaptable person had their limits of what they could learn. And it was obvious that even what she’d seen through his and Nile’s eyes hadn’t prepared her for everything.

“Get out of your head, Book. Your guilt won’t help Nicky and Joe.” Nile’s words cut through flesh and bone.

Of course it wouldn’t, it’s just…

“And don’t start ragging on yourself either. If you want to make it up to them, stop making this about you, and start thinking where they took them.”

“Nile.” But he knew she was right, so he opened the computer, connecting to the internet and contacting Copley. Booker knew he was decent with a computer, but Copley was way better than him. Together, with a bit of help from Nile, they started going through Kozak’s files, Copley melting her passwords out of the way like a warm knife slicing through butter. 

“There’s a second lab.” Nile said. “She’s even got a stream going from it.”

“It’s too easy.” Booker muttered. The others turned his way. “They want us to come there. If we stay here, they can’t grab us among the cops. Not after what happened last time. But if we go after them…”

“If we don’t, she might end up killing Sol. She doesn’t care that he won’t survive her testing.”

Merrick hadn’t cared about Andy’s mortality either. And Carlton Merrick seemed, if possible, even less moral than his grandson had been.

Steven Merrick at least had cared enough to pretend he gave a fuck about people other than himself.

Williams was still staring at the image on the screen. Booker turned it off. He’d left it on too long as it were.

“You can survive that?” They ignored the fed.

“So, did you, or whoever’s on the other side of the line, find anything?” The guy continued. Book set ready to ignore him again when a call rang out from the messenger. Book answered it without thinking, and Copley’s image appeared in the corner of the screen. 

“I’ve tracked down the stream from Kozak’s lab. It hasn’t gone far. Even if I consider routers, the location seems to be somewhere in the building.”

“But we’ve already checked the entire building.” Williams interrupted again.

“That’s what Merrick is counting on. He expects us to stop looking, to try and find them elsewhere.”

William grabbed another computer and started looking at something, Copley seemed to realize, and was soon looking at the same page. Floor plans for the building. Construction licenses from before Merrick bought the building, Work done after the building was supposed to have been finished.

“There’s at least five more basement floors.”

“How do we get there?”

“Garnett said he brought Solomon here, right?” Williams asked.

“So?” 

“But nobody saw him leave. Nobody saw him leave the lab. If he’s not here, then…”

Andy started patting the walls, checking shelves, closets, till they finally found a false wall. It slid out of the way, showing a security panel asking for a code. 

It took Copley a scarily short time to get through it and open the door of the elevator. Booker was making sure to remind himself to never ever play poker with the guy.

He wasn’t sure what to think of the team working with the man. Copley ‘was’ the best at what he did. He could help them in ways Booker himself could not. It’s just…

The man hadn’t checked into Merrick’s morality any more than Booker himself had.

Booker had had time to think of the mission that Copley had sent them on. On the men that had been guarding the place. They hadn’t looked like Merrick’s people. Had they really deserved to die? Were they more innocents that him and Copley had sent to their deaths?

More blood on his hands?

“We’re going in.”

The elevator looked like a trap. It opened too easily. It would be too easy for them to get caught in too small a space to fight themselves out of. Booker considered saying so, but one look from Andy told him she already knew. She just didn’t care. 

Nicky and Joe were trapped. An innocent boy, Nile’s brother, was in danger. 

They’d go in no matter what. He just made sure to take the front spot, keeping Andy and Williams behind him and Nile. Quynh joined to do the same. No matter how it ended, they’d make damn sure none of them would die during this.

  
  


*****

  
  
  


The Italian had seemed so horrified, when he saw his friend’s body on the table. The men had to struggle to get him on the table. All his energy seemed focused on the other man. 

“Nicolò.” It was a soft whisper, that should be almost impossible, but it was as if the man’s lungs had regrown just in time for him to say his friend’s, his lover’s name.

She wondered if maybe she could prove she could be kind, that she wasn’t the monster they thought she was. Let them spend their nights together, put them together in one cell. It would be a bit cramped, but if it made them feel better during their time off, she could even keep it as a reward for cooperation, for good behavior. They were smart enough to know what was good for them. They had to be, to have stayed hidden for as long as they had.

She remembered Copley’s files on them. The work they had done. Yet, somehow, they didn’t understand how much more good they could do through this, how much they could help humanity simply by sharing what they had.

“Amore mio. Yusuf.”

She didn’t speak Italian, but she could understand that.

“Clean up subject two. I’m starting on subject one.” She told her assistant. The woman nodded and quickly complied. Meta didn’t even remember her name, it didn’t matter.

Her focus turned to her work. She removed her blood soaked gloves and put them in the trash before replacing them with new ones. Soon, subject one’s, Nicolò’s, blood was all over those. 

Subject two, Yusuf, kept staring at her as she worked on his lover. A cold glare filled with threats she had to make sure he could never fullfill.  


This was for the greater good. They’d understand that one day. And even if they didn’t… it wouldn’t matter. People would praise her name. 

She just had to do the work, put in the effort. 

No matter what the lab rats thought of it.

It was the last thought she had before a bullet pierced her head

*****

  
  


Andy hated how everyone was treating her as if she were fragile. She tolerated it, mostly because it made them feel better. But that didn’t mean that she couldn’t take care of herself. Quynh looked back at her, and for a moment Andy shivered under her eyes. She wanted to hold Quynh, to touch her, kiss her, but what if when she did, it was all a lie and Quynh disappeared on her once more. 

She knew it would be what she deserved, after the way she’d abandoned Quynh, how she’d given up the search. Maybe it was how easy it had all been; how Quynh had slid back into the group with the same grace she did everything. 

It made it nigh impossible to see this as real, because only in a dream would Quynh not hate her for her greatest sin, her betrayal.

She felt the elevator go down and down, the drop feeling almost eternal. When it stopped in its track, none of them were surprised. They just waited for the door to open. They didn’t expect gas to start pouring into the cabin, though they probably should have. This was part of the bad guy’s plan after all.

Andy didn’t even wait, she jumped on Booker’s shoulder. It didn’t take Booker more than a second to clue in on what she was doing, as he stood still, giving her a chance to push open the escape panel on the top of the elevator. She opened just enough of an air vent into the shaft for the gas to fade out. By the time the elevator started moving again, most of the gas had evaporated. Andy let herself drop down, as did the others. When the door opened, there were several guards waiting for them with guns, ready to take them all down with a rain of bullets. Andy jumped forwards, axe in her hand, before they could do so. The others followed her lead, right behind her. Nile and Booker just had their guns, and a pair of knives. They really had to get Nile a better blade for close quarter combat. Booker had always rejected swords as too outdated. The silly boy had never really understood the benefits of a good blade.

By the time they were done, the hallway was covered in debris and corpses. The NCIS agent stared at them in shock. At least he hadn’t gotten hurt. Andy cleaned her blade on one of the corpses, watching Quynh do the same in the corner of her eye. It felt so right to have her there, too right.

There were two ways for them to go, but she wasn’t sure if they could take the risk to split up. Too many hostiles, they’re own numbers far too low..

Quynh made the choice for them, heading to the left. Andy followed her, watching her back. There were more guards coming from behind them, so they moved into the next room, ready to check it out, and figure out where they were going, before they took out their attackers. By the time they were done, and she looked back, Nile, Booker and Williams were nowhere in sight, and Andy was bleeding from a wound on her side. 

Quynh was staring at it. It was the first time since Quynh’s return that Andy had gotten injured. The other woman stared at the tiny trail of blood dripping down from the injury.

“You really aren’t healing anymore.” Quynh said.

Andy closed her eyes, not sure what to say.

“I’m going to lose you. Like we lost Lykon.”

Andy wanted to apologize, Quynh didn’t let her, pulling her close, breaking the distance Andy had tried to keep between them. “Please don’t be careless Ahn. I can’t lose you any sooner than I absolutely have to. We’ve lost so much time already.”

Andy wanted to promise her anything. That she’d let the others take the lead, that she’d stay safe. But no matter how much she wanted to do that for Quynh, she also knew how hard that would be. To let her kin jump into danger, and be unable to keep them safe. It scared her, knowing that one day she’d be gone. Who would look after Nile and the boys if she wasn’t there anymore?

Maybe that’s why she hadn’t even hesitated to bring Booker back. To have one of her boys out in the cold, unprotected, alone. No matter what he’d done. She could be angry with him over hurting Nicky and Joe, but she also understood his desperation. She’d felt the same way ever since she’d lost Quynh. 

“I’ll try.” She answered. It was all she could promise. 

“Then I’m just going to have to do it for you, won’t I?” Quynh stated as she cut off her sleeve and pressed it over Andy’s injury.

It was such a tiny prick, just the edge of a bullet. It had just scraped her side, not hitting anything vital. Yet it was still bleeding. If she’d still been immortal, she’d barely even have noticed it.

Quynh and her stared around, looking at the room they’d entered. It was full of medical stuff. Neither of them recognized most of it. There were fridges on both sides of the room, Andy looked into one of them. Carefully tagged bags of blood, human organs. She didn’t need to read any labels to know whose those were. She sneered at all of it, “we need to destroy this place.”

Quynh didn’t even ask why. They’d always understood one another better than anyone else ever did.

But then, what could you expect? Quynh had always been the other half of her heart.


	16. Chapter 16

16.

  
  


Nile dragged Fred along with her, while Booker covered their escape. It wasn’t until they managed to get themselves covered behind a door, locking it behind them, that she realized Andy and Quynh weren’t with them.

“Fuck.”

“Where’s Andy?”

Nile didn’t answer. Instead she started looking at the room they’d locked themselves into. Turns out it was the secondary security control room. Which was lucky for them, not so lucky for the other side.

She remembered the training she’d had as a security guard at the local mall, and started setting up the screens, looping them between the three monitors. It took her about a minute to find the wreckage Andy and Quynh had left behind them. It seemed like they’d run into a room without camera surveillance. Finding Solomon took a bit longer. He was in a cell, sitting on a cot, staring at something at the front of the cell. 

There were a few more cells, but those were empty. Nile wondered if those had been meant for the rest of them. What would have happened to Sol, once they got their hands on her and the others?

Book was staring at the third loop. Nile put it on the main monitor. It was a lab, similar to the one she’d saved the others from last time. Williams came closer as well, gasping as he saw what Kozak was doing to Nicky. At Joe’s body, already healing as a lab technician released the clamps holding his chest open. 

“I don’t fucking care what you guys are, that bitch is going down,” uncle Fred said. Nile nodded. “I just wish there was a way to show this as evidence in court. But we can’t do that, can we?”

“Not unless you want the entire world to come after us for some supposed miracle cure,” Booker growled out.

“I’m not that stupid,” Fred said before checking the hallway behind them. “How many of them do you think are there waiting for us?”

Nile checked. “About six.”

“Damn.” Fred grabbed his phone, trying to reach the cops. Unfortunately there was no connection. Probably for the best that they didn’t get the cops in on this till they destroyed whatever evidence the new Merrick and Kozak had on them.

“Nile.”

She turned to Booker. “Your Mom seemed … nice.”

“She’s a force to be reckoned with.”

“So what are you going to do?” Nile shivered at his question.  


“Beg and grovel and pray she forgives me?”

“Good luck with that one.” Fred muttered.

“Oh God, I’m in deep shit, aren’t I?”

“I’d blame the white guy, if I were you.”

“Thanks a lot.” Booker rolled his eyes before turning to her. “He’s not wrong though.”

“I’m not gonna blame you Book. My Mom knows damn well I make up my own mind.”

“You and Andy have got that in common. I guess it’s why she wants you to take over from her.”

It was the first time one of the others had said what she’d been suspecting ever since Andy started training her. Nile didn’t get it. She was only a kid compared to the others, if even that. The others had more experience, more training. There was no way she could ever catch up with any of them, and yet… 

“We’re not leaders, Nile, none of us are. We can take up leadership in a tough spot when needed. But the rest of us, Nicky needs to be pulled back from himself, he cares too much. Is willing to do too much if it would help people. Joe, he hates making the hard choices, and he’d just go along with whatever Nicky asked of him, because we’re all softies for Nicky when he starts on his ‘it’s the right thing’ spiel. And me, don’t even get me started on how bad I’d screw everything up. You, though… You’re like Andy. You’re a leader, but you’ve still got heart. We can all see that. You just need to learn to see it too.”

Nile shivered, trying not to think of it. To push it away. Andy wasn’t dead yet, not even close to it. She still had plenty of time. And the longer Nile could delay that future, the better.

“Let’s get ready” She kicked open the door, the guards didn’t half know what they were in for.

  
  


*****   
  


Solomon stared at the door, at the two empty cells on the other side of the hallway. Nicolò hadn’t even fought when they came to get him. Not that it stopped them from sedating him. But Nicky had wanted to be wherever Joe was. 

Solomon couldn’t even imagine loving someone so much that you’d willingly go into torture just to know what was being done to them.

Well… maybe if it had been Nile.

The door went open, he flinched back. Part of him terrified that now that they had Joe and Nicky, that they’d just come and kill him. Or worse, take him to Kozak as well.

Instead the woman coming through the door was a stranger. 

There were two of them, one white, one Asian. Both of them armed and covered in blood. Though it was harder to see it on the Asian woman’s red clothes. Clothes that looked like it’d be a shame that she’d have to throw them out after this.

“Solomon Freeman?”

He got up, ready to fight back if he had to. “You’re definitely related to Nile.” The woman grinned as she said it, keeping an eye on the door while her friend opened the lock on his cell. 

He was a bit hesitant in coming out. 

“Are we going to get Nicky and Joe next?” Because if she expected him to leave the two of them behind, then she had another thing coming.

“Damn right we are.”

The Asian woman smiled at him and gave him a knife. She didn’t ask if he knew how to use it. He didn’t bother to tell her that he’d never used a knife outside of dinner or in a classroom. The idea of stabbing anyone was too horrifying to even consider. And yet, if those guys were planning to take him again, that wouldn’t stop him now.

Andy and Quynh, as they introduced themselves, took the lead. It was obvious they were trying to keep him safe. But at least they weren’t treating him like he was completely defenseless. Just… mortal. 

The place looked like a maze, with doors on all sides, leading to labs and archives and corridors to other corridors. 

He didn’t even want to ask if his guides even knew where they were going. If they didn’t, well, it wasn’t like it made a difference, now did it? Anywhere was better than being locked up.

  
  


*****   
  


  
  


Booker kept flashing back to last year. He’d been alone for months. Andy was wandering. She’d needed some time after the last mission. Some time to think to feel right. Especially after how things had gotten screwed up, how they hadn’t even known for sure they were on the right side for any of it. 

Nicky and Joe had asked him if he’d wanted to go with them. He could have. It’s just… they needed some time alone. They’d been going from mission to mission for the past ten years. And even though they hadn’t said so, even Booker could see that the two men wanted nothing more than to spend the next few months simply reconnecting. He’d only be a third wheel for any of that. And without Andy there, that would be impossible to deal with.

Copley had found him in a hotel in Nice. He’d been spying on one of his descendants. The boy was trying to be an influencer. Booker didn’t have a clue what that was supposed to mean. But it apparently involved walking the quay dressed in five different outfits, each one flashier than the one before it.

It only served to make him feel even older than he already did. The boy had Amélie’s eyes.

He’d startled when Copley sat down in front of him. Sebastien had been ready to grab for his gun, the only thing stopping him, was that they were in public. 

“I was hoping to talk, monsieur Le Livre.”

He’d told Copley no, that first time.

He should have shot him the second time the man tracked him down, or the third. 

But he was lonely, and Copley, for all that he knew the man was a threat, was company. He was someone who knew just who he was. 

Copley told him about Merrick, how Merrick’s company had recently found a cure for cancer. He talked about the millions of people diagnosed with cancer each year. How each year millions of people died of diseases, grew feeble, weak, and how miraculous it was that there were people like Booker who were inherently immune to all of it.

He’d told Copley it wasn’t worth it. 

But the man was a persistent asshole. And all Booker would have to do was give Merrick some evidence. Some samples of the others, to come in for testing. And then when that didn’t work out, let them have the others.

It would only be temporary. Just some tests, some…

He should have said no. He should have killed the man, gone underground and warned the others.

Instead he’d betrayed his family and he’d lost everything.

Booker wondered if Nile even realized how good she was at this. The way she took charge, commanding both him and the fed to follow her. The fed hadn’t even realized he was taking her commands. 

It wasn’t just that she was trained to command a unit. She’d only been a corporal. It was the light in her, as if something inside of her said ‘I know what I’m doing’, and the thing is, she did. She was the one who took advantage of the camera, made him find a floorplan, so they actually knew where they were going.

Her only hesitation had been on which of the targets to get to first.

And he knew it had broken her heart to have to leave her brother in place while they went for Nicky and Joe. But she’d known that, for now, her brother was safe, while Nicky and Joe weren’t.

The lab was heavily secured. It didn’t stop them. Williams seemed shocked at how quickly they got back up after being shot. How easily they’d take a bullet for him. But even the risk that, unlike them, he wouldn’t get up if he were shot wasn’t enough to stop the man from helping them. He was one of the bravest men Booker had ever met. 

Nile stood ready as Booker got the door open, using one of the passwords Copley had given them. Kozak hadn’t even seemed to realize how close they’d gotten. Booker glared at her, at the way she was touching Nicky, Nile gasped in horror when she saw Joe.

Booker shot her before he could even think of it. He just wanted her away from Nicky.

“Book, she still needed to tell us where her boss is.”

Fuck.

“We’ll find another way.” They had to, or he’d have fucked everything up all over again.

It’s just… Last time, they hadn’t been there long enough for him to see what the woman had been doing to Nicky and Joe. The two of them had been there for days before Andy and him had been dragged in. But they’d been tortured then as well. Because of him. They were tortured now, because of him. 

And he couldn’t feel sorry for killing her.

  
  


******   
  
  


Joe felt like he’d been screaming for hours before they even brought Nicky into the room. The one good thing of any of it, had been that as long as she was working on him, Nicky had been safe, unhurt. 

He’d go through all of it again, if it meant she wasn’t laying fingers on everything that mattered instead. He kept trying to move his fingers, his toes, anything, but whatever she was giving him kept him from doing so.

There were few people he’d ever hated as whole-heartedly as her. He kept hoping for someone to come in and stop her, for anything to happen so he could save his Nicolò. But he couldn’t even move an inch.

So when the door opened, he almost thought he was dreaming when he saw Booker’s face. Just another nightmare of Booker, of Sebastien betraying them. Like so many of the ones he’d woken up from in the past few months.

Then he figured, of course Booker was here. Had he turned himself in, had he betrayed them again? It took a few seconds for him to realize what had happened as a shot rang through the room, and blood started sipping from between Kozak’s eyes, right before she collapsed to the floor.

Nile came in right after Booker, to the rescue once more like the angel she’d become to them. Their righteous Jibrīl calling them to war and salvation

Booker cut off the transfusion that had been going into his veins, paralyzing him, slowing down his healing, just as Nile started removing the straps on Nicky’s arms. Joe could feel his chest healing, desperate to get up and get to Nicky. Booker was there within seconds to offer him a hand to get up. 

The touch made Joe feel ashamed. And yet…

His little brother didn’t even try to tell him to stay down, to let himself heal. The man knew better than that. He understood that Joe couldn’t let himself heal until he knew for sure that Nicky, that his Nicolò would be fine.

“Habibi.” Nicky looked up at him. Their foreheads touched for a moment, Nicky reaching out towards him. 

Nile didn’t make them hurry either. She just grabbed them some surgical shrubs so they could cover up, before guarding the door.

Joe didn’t even fight when Booker helped him get into some pants, careful not to let the fabric touch the still open wound on his chest. It felt almost comforting to lean on his younger brother, to allow himself to trust Booker again. To wonder that maybe all of it, all the love he’d felt for him, all the love he’d believed Booker had had for him, had been real after all. 

Nicky grabbed a scalpel from the table, while Joe stared at the woman who’d been helping Kozak. Last time they had let Kozak go, thinking she wouldn’t be a threat without Merrick backing her. It had been a mistake. 

A mistake he wasn’t about to repeat.

Only the fed got between him and the woman.

“I get it, believe me. But we need her.” The man’s eyes desperately turned away from Joe’s chest, Joe stared down, the skin was finally closing down, even if the innards underneath weren’t fully done with healing.

Joe glared at the man, wondering what he was even doing here.

“He’s a friend, Joe. He’s been helping us against Merrick.” Booker said.

He shouldn’t put faith in that, just because Booker said it, not after last time. Yet somehow… it was enough to hold him off. And maybe he was a fool, catching himself on the same rock twice. But he so desperately wanted to believe that not everything he’d thought he knew had been false.

“Now where did you say the doctor was getting her orders from?” Williams asked the woman.

“Mister Merrick. Carlton Merrick.”

“I understand you’re scared. But Tina, you do understand that what was happening here is wrong?”

She started crying. But tears were easy to fake, and even if they weren’t false, she’d done nothing but help Kozak as the woman cut him open and started harvesting his organs. She’d stood there and watched as Kozak had put her scalpel into Nicky’s skin. So really, how much better was that?

“It was just supposed to be a job. I was just following orders.”

She looked so young, a child. She sounded just like the men he’d fought in the forties. Following orders, doing as told. No matter how horrible.

But Williams believed they could use her to turn on her employer. To take Merrick down once and for all.

Nicky leant into him, needing him to keep standing. Joe instantly switched his attention from the woman to his heart and soul. And if part of him realized that Nicky was trying to distract him, he didn’t care. They were fine, they were safe. They just had to get Nile’s brother, and get out. Once they did that, the rest of it would sort itself out.


	17. Chapter 17

17.

  
  
  


By the time Andy found her boys, they’d already found one another, Nile leading the charge. Andy stared at them, at the future of her family, seeing them move together as a unit, without her in it. It would work, it had to work. 

She smiled. 

Quynh stared at her. Slapping her. 

“Don’t even think of it.”

“Think of what?”

Quynh didn’t answer and joined the others, Andy looked back at Solomon who stood hesitant, the boy was staring at his sister. It was then that Andy realized that Nile had blood all over her. Not just where she’d been hit, but the blood of enemies.

The boy was innocent, kindhearted, just like his sister. And he was a fighter, just like her. But he wasn’t a soldier. And he’d probably never fully connected the training his sister had gotten, with the necessity for her to kill.

“Sol?” Nile screamed her brother’s name, a smile blooming on her face. “Solomon!”

It was only Andy who noticed that the kid took a step back, even as Nile ran up to him, pulling him closer.

Solomon was shaking.

“Nile.” Andy tried.

It took Nile a few seconds to realize that her brother wasn’t hugging her back.

“Sol?”

“You’re…”

Nile’s confidence shattered, it was like something broke inside the girl, and Andy wanted to pull her close and protect her.

Nile pulled away from her brother, hesitant about what to do. That’s when Solomon took a step forward, realizing what he’d just done.

“Nile?”

“Hey, Sol.”

“You really are alive. “ 

“Yes. I’m sorry, Sol. I’m so sorry.”

Andy wondered if the two Freemans even realized they were stuck on different things. When they got closer again, Solomon was the first one to reach out, Nile hesitant this time.

“I missed you so much, River Girl. I thought I'd lost you forever.”

“I missed you too, Sollie. I thought… I don’t know what I was thinking. I just didn’t want you to hate me.”

“I could never hate you, Nile. Never. You’re my big sister, my idol. My…” Then a grin appeared on the kid’s face. “And apparently a superhero? Like why do you get to be all the cool things?”

The two kids started laughing as if about a joke that only the two of them understood. Andy was so busy focusing on them that she almost missed the final guard’s attack. She was barely able to push herself out of the way so the bullet wouldn't kill her straight away. 

She went down far faster than she’d ever thought possible.

It was just one bullet.

  
  
  


******   
  


Sol hadn’t been paying attention, too shocked at seeing Nile. 

It wasn’t just seeing her. It had been one thing watching Andy or Quynh kill people. Scary, and exciting and even, in a way, amazing. But then he’d seen Nile, covered in blood like Andy was, and he'd realized. His Nile had killed people. It just felt so … different from everything he knew about his sister, and it scared him, made him wonder if he even knew her anymore.

One of the guys screamed as he saw Andy go down. Nicky almost fell as he tried to run at her as well. Neither him or Joe had fully recovered yet. Sol didn’t even want to look at their injuries, at how they were visibly recovering from them in a way that was so utterly inhuman. Like something out of a movie. Only proving even more just how much Nile had changed as well.

Nile who let go of him, and screamed Andy’s name along with the others. Nile who knelt down next to the woman, a woman who seemed all too human as she bled out over the floor. Quynh came up to her as well, a bloodied knife in her hand that she’d just used to take out the guard that had dared to shoot Andy. 

Sol remembered what Nicky and Joe had told him, how one day the healing would stop, like it had for Andy. That meant Nile would one day die for real. And he’d almost pulled away from her, possibly losing her forever. He couldn’t make her lose Andy now. He heard uncle Fred tell whomever he was talking to on the phone to bring paramedics. That one of their own had gone down. He was using the phone from the lab. Sol wondered where they were that uncle Fred didn’t just use his own phone.

Andy was still bleeding and no one was doing anything. Nicky seemed to be trying to get to her, but he stumbled when he even tried to make a move.

Sol knew he was the only one who had a shot at doing anything.

He was only pre-med and had no real experience in treating people. But he’d taken first aid in highschool. It wasn’t nearly enough, but he knew he had to do something. He got a box of tissues from Kozak’s supplies, using what he’d seen from training videos, from what the coach had told him about stopping the bleeding first and foremost. 

By the time the paramedics made it to them, staring in horror at the heaps of dead bodies surrounding them, he’d barely managed to get Andy stable.

He let the professionals handle her after that. One of the paramedics gave him a nod, as Quynh put her hand on his shoulder, saying something in a language he didn’t recognize. 

“Thank you, little brother” she then repeated, this time in English, before joining the paramedics on their way to the elevator, refusing to leave Andy alone for even a second.

They were all tired, and Sol leaned on Nile as they left, following the group.

“I’m still pissed at you, you know.”

“Don’t remind me, I still have to face Mom.”

“Oh man, you are in so much trouble. I’m going to be the favorite child for the next few decades for sure.”

“Sol.”

“You’re going to be on dishwashing duty for at least the next dozen family reunions.”

“Sol.” 

“Did Mom use the full name yet?”

“Sol!”

Nile was back, and he was going to make sure she’d never hear the end of it.

  
  
  


*****   
  


Booker stared at the others, Nile was focusing on her brother. Andy was being taken to the hospital, and Quynh had gone with her. Leaving him alone with Nicky and Joe. He ducked under their gaze.

He knew what was coming. They’d send him away again, tell him thanks for coming to help, but that they didn’t need him anymore.

“Get out of your head, Book.”

Joe pulled himself up, hiding his injuries behind a labcoat he’d stolen from Kozak’s lab, pretending he’d taken it to shield him from the cold.

“Do you know how often I’ve had nightmares about you betraying me.”

Booker’s hair stood up at the back of his neck.

“Of watching Nicky die in front of me, unable to get to him, because you shot him, like you did Andy. Only in my dreams, Nicky didn’t get back up.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m not…” Joe’s hand brushed through his hair. “Fuck, I’m doing this all wrong, aren’t I?”

“What we’re saying, Sebastien. Is that when we needed you, you came back. You were hurting, but you came back for us.”

“When I was on that table, and I saw you come in, part of me thought it was another bad dream. But it wasn’t. You had our backs. I don’t know if I can ever forget what you did. But Book, it matters. It matters that, when we needed you, you were there. I don’t know about the others. But I’m not letting you leave again. Not now, not ever. Got that?”

Book was too startled to say anything. He didn’t have to, Joe pulled him into a hug, Nicky joined soon after.

“Are we hugging Booker?” Nile said with a smile before joining in as well.

Booker knew he didn’t deserve it. he knew he’d done wrong. But there was nothing in the world that could ever make him stupid enough to turn on these people again. He knew they had no reason to believe him If he ever said that. So he figured he might as well show it.

The tears on his face kept flowing.

*****

Carlton Merrick had never felt so humiliated in his life. Dragged out of his penthouse in cuffs, like an ordinary criminal. He was telling his aid to call his lawyers, telling the cops they’d regret this, screaming and yelling at everyone how stupid they were.

He would have given humanity immortality. And they were throwing it all out as if it was nothing.

When he saw them stand around at the elevator shaft as he was taken out he tried to tell the cops they were arresting the wrong people.

It was those immortal monsters who should be locked up. Couldn’t they see the blood on them? 

But nobody was listening as he ranted and raved. Some of his own people were staring at him in pity, as if he was nothing more than a mad man. 

Why didn’t they listen? Why didn’t they care? 

It’s not like those things were people. 

To make matters worse the press was waiting for them outside. As if to celebrate the downfall of the great. But then he knew not to expect any better of them. Vultures the whole lot of them. 

He expected the board to at least try and interfere on his behalf. Only turns out they didn’t. 

He would have made the company a fortune, but they weren’t listening. All they cared about was the bad press. They claimed he’d almost destroyed the company. They voted him out of the board, putting his misbegotten wastrel of a son in his place. They were the real insane ones.

His lawyer claimed dementia.

Fools the lot of them.

They were all laughing at him, those damn monsters with their immortality, mocking him for being old and feeble when they had the one thing he’d give his entire fortune for.

He tried to get his lawyers to talk to people, get them interested. Get anyone going after them, find the truth. But nobody listened, nobody cared. And as he sat in the closed off section of the care ward, he cursed everyone, all the parasites sucking on the teeth of his wealth who abandoned him now that he needed them most.

  
  



	18. Chapter 18

Epilogue

  
  


Ronnell couldn’t help but smile as people started arriving for Christmas. 

Solomon was helping Suzie’s kids set up the tree while Fred and Suzie were quietly talking in the kitchen. She’d left them alone. She knew they wouldn’t get together again, but it was nice to see the two of them at least talking. 

When she heard a car stop, she got to the door before the bell could even ring. Nile was standing behind the door, still looking a bit shy.

Her daughter's friends seemed a bit hesitant, but she quickly welcomed them inside as well.

It was strange dealing with these people. These ancient men and women who were becoming her daughter’s new family. Who’d welcomed her little girl with open arms. Part of her felt like they were stealing Nile away from her. The problem was, fate had already done that, and they were the safety net that Nile would need for her new life.

Ronnell quickly told them where to hang up their coats and put their presents before she agreed to let Nicky help her with dinner. Nile had made some serious hints about the guy’s cooking ability. Something about nine hundred years of experience in a kitchen. The numbers kept rattling in her head. How the women, Andromache, Andy, and her partner, Quynh, were literally thousands of years old. Had been born before Christ, had seen ancient civilizations rise, fall and crumble. 

And yet, here they were, celebrating Christmas as if it were nothing. Quynh seemed amazed by the lights in the tree, the candles set around the room. Ronnell wondered if she saw it as magic, or if she just found it pretty. 

The sad Frenchman seemed a bit hesitant to come in. She remembered the feeling of what it had been like to have thought she’d lost Nile, that Sol might be gone as well. It had been the worst feeling of her life, and he lived that every day. Knowing his wife and children were long gone, with no way to ever get them back. 

It made her feel for him in a way that only another parent and widower could ever understand. That still didn’t mean he wasn’t far too old to be looking at her Nile like that. Oh, he wasn’t trying anything. Sebastien was almost shy around the others, as if terrified they’d kick him to the side and ignore him. Nile had told her the reasons for that. And Ronnell got it. Her cousin had lost himself in drugs a few years ago, and at some point his parents had had to make a choice. Let him stay, knowing he was only getting worse, or make him leave for their own safety. It had not been an easy choice to make. The day the boy came home, clean, it had been the best day in his parents life.  


Joe followed his husband to the kitchen, helping him set up some of the bags of food they’d brought. Ronnell quickly joined them there. Listening to them talk in quick Italian that was far beyond her own language skills. She quickly chased Joe out of her kitchen. Only the cooks were supposed to be there, and she knew better than to let a man near her pots, they had a bad habit of trying to taste test before things were ready.

“Thank you for allowing us in your home, Mrs. Freeman.”

“Call me Ronnell. And it’s my pleasure to have you here.”

The man looked almost frail. The sound was coming from the television in the living room, talk of protests, of disasters. Someone turned it off, and it felt like a relief.

“The world has changed a great deal.”

“I guess you’d know.”

“Sometimes. Andy says it’s overwhelming. That there’s so much news that it’s hard not to believe the world is always burning somewhere. It’s easy to forget that it always has. We just didn’t hear about most of it.”

Ronnell couldn’t help but agree.

“It’s just. When president Obama was elected, I was so hopeful that things would get better. That my children would have all the opportunities they should have always had. That their lives would be better than ours were. And then … nothing changed. Things only seem to get worse. People seem to feel more free to hate those who are different, louder, harsher.”

Nicky hesitated.

“When I was a boy, bishops came to preach to us about horrors in the holy land. How pilgrims were being attacked. Children were being murdered. That caravans of merchants were swindled for their money, and cities were under constant attack of infidels forcing them to swear to a false prophet. They were our version of ‘news’.

When the pope called us to go to war, they were the only source of information many of us had.”

“The Crusades.”

“Yes.” Nicky closed his eyes, as if lost in the past. “I believed I was fighting for a good cause. That I was defending the faithful, I was taught to hate, and I let it guide me for far too long.”

“Your Joe’s a Muslim right?”

“Yes, he is. We met on the battlefield. It took me years to get over my false beliefs. To open my eyes and realize the world was far more beautiful than I’d ever believed it to be. It took listening to Joe, to people like him. To live among people who were different. To see them… as human beings first.”

Ronnell tried to look at the man in front of her, tried to imagine a more modern version of him. It was nigh impossible.

“People can change Ronnell. They just need to want to change.”

“Do you think Nile will ever… that she’ll ever see a world where people won’t judge her for the color of her skin?”

“I was told that being gay was a sin. That my love for men would damn me to hell. Now men and women can scream their love for one another in public. Joe and I were able to officially get married only a few years ago. It was under false names. But I was public, official. Things change. We can make things better. We have to.”

She took a deep breath, remembering what Nile had told her. That Nicky and Joe had been together for nine hundred years. Nine hundred years before they were allowed to publicly declare their love for one another, with no fear of people’s reaction, with governments accepting their relationship.

“I can’t make promises. But a great man I once met said that he hoped for a day when people of all colors and creed could sit together at a table of brotherhood. If we can help them get there, is that not worth it?”

“You met Dr King?”

“Yes.” He didn’t continue and it had her rattled. Had her trying to get stories out of him. Who else had they met, had they dealt with. How much of history had these people been part of.

“Oh Mom, if you think them meeting Dr King was special, you should ask Joe about meeting Harriet Tubman. “ Nile stood there, ready for duty. She quickly set her daughter to start peeling potatoes. 

Her daughter was part of history now, she would be making it, changing it for the better. She saw her joke with Nicky, she saw her son talk with Joe about changing his major. How he was going to become a medical doctor, work at a free hospital, instead of becoming a researcher. Especially now that they no longer needed to worry about money.

Merrick Pharmaceuticals had given them millions in a desperate attempt to keep them from suing the entire company for what Carlton Merrick and his doctors had put Solomon through. For the attempted kidnapping of Nile, making her go underground to keep Merrick’s people from experimenting on her. 

Fred had managed to get her an honorable discharge after the fact. Her fear was understandable after how she’d been treated, both by her superiors and Merrick. 

Ronnell didn’t quite understand where Merrick had gone, something about his own children having him declared mentally unfit, locked up in some closed ward. They said he was suffering from dementia. That his mind had tricked him into believing in fantasies, and projecting those on people. He’d dragged his own grandson to his death by getting him to believe in those same delusions. 

Ronnell knew that they were wrong, that immortals really did exist. But well… what the world didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her Nile. All that mattered was that nobody would come after her daughter again over a gift she hadn’t even asked for.

The silencing money involved a gag order. She should have protested it. But really, she appreciated it. it meant she could point at the gag order without having to explain why she wasn’t answering the press questions about Nile. Why they wanted to fade out of sight, instead of being in the center of attention. It’s why Nile and the others hadn’t visited her much before now. It wasn’t until a few months ago that the press had finally gotten the message that they weren’t interested in interviews, or spreading their faces around on tv screens or internet bulletin boards.

She’d never want for money again. Her son could take any job he could possibly want, based on what he wanted to do rather than what could pay for the mortgage on her house. Her daughter could… her daughter could be a hero. 

She looked at the living room, at the family warming up the room with her presence. Her husband’s picture on the mantle board of the fireplace.

‘We have a family, Victor. And it’s a good one.’ She thought at him. “I just wish…”

Nicky laughed at something Nile said. Fred and Suzie looked at one another, joking about something their kids had done. Andy and Quynh were sitting in a corner, just sharing time. Sebastien was using his tablet to talk to a man called Copley. A man they told her used to work for Merrick but was working for Nile’s family now. 

It was good.

The end


End file.
